Brussels, 16/11/2015 (Agence Europe) - On Monday 16 November, three days after the terrorist attacks in Paris - which have claimed 129 lives and left 352 wounded - the representative of the EU's home affairs ministers and the European Commission started preparatory work on their response to these attacks. There will be an extraordinary Justice and Home Affairs (JHA) Council on this on Friday 20 November.
An initial meeting of the standing committee on internal security (COSI) in the member states took place in Brussels on Sunday 15 and Monday 16 November. European Commissioner for Migration, Home Affairs and Citizenship Dimitris Avramopoulos and Luxembourg's home affairs minister, Etienne Schneider, travelled to Paris to meet France's home affairs minister, Bernard Cazeneuve, in order to draw up the agenda for this extraordinary meeting of the JHA Council.
The extraordinary JHA Council is expected to have three main items on its agenda - firearms trafficking and the movement of weapons; the European passenger name record (PNR) agreement on transferring air passengers' data, which is still to be finalised; and strengthening controls at the EU's external borders through the systematic and coordinated control of passengers coming from so-called sensitive destinations and who cross the EU's external borders (including European nationals).
Arriving at the European foreign affairs ministers meeting in Brussels on Monday 16 November, France's secretary of state for European affairs, Harlem Désir, underlined the importance of strengthening the control of external borders. “As regards police and judicial cooperation and information, as regards the fight against terrorist networks on European soil, we must finally adopt the decisions we have been working on since just after the attacks in January and on which France has insisted - the PNR, of course, the fight against arms trafficking in Europe, the fight against the financing of terrorism, the possibility of strengthening border controls - both inside the Schengen area but also the control of our external borders - and obviously decisions must be taken”, he said.
The previous day, Cazeneuve had given details of Paris' expectations on these issues, saying that as regards the external borders, a targeted review of the Schengen Borders Code was needed. France is not, however, expected to demand any particular change concerning controls at the internal borders, and is not at all expected to demand that the Schengen borderless area be suspended. Paris has thus far only used the possibilities offered by the Schengen Code, which allow it to use temporary controls at its borders.
During his address at the Versailles Congress on Monday afternoon, France's President François Hollande reiterated the importance of controlling the EU's external borders. Several of the eight perpetrators of the attacks in Paris on Friday 13 November had travelled through Syria. Alluding to the welcome for refugees fleeing from ISIL, Hollande said it was “vital that Europe welcome in dignity those who have the right to asylum, and that it returns to their country those who do not have this right. This is what requires an effective protection of the external borders. And if Europe does not control its external borders, then - and we are seeing it - it's a return to the national borders. This will then be the destruction of the European Union.”
As regards the external borders, guidelines/risk criteria were published for border guards by the European Commission in May in order to strengthen checks on some travellers - on the basis of criteria such as behaviour and destination. These travellers should be controlled in relation to the Schengen Information System (SIS) II or on the Interpol basis of lost or stolen travel documents. These risk criteria had been decided upon in the aftermath of the January 2015 attacks in Paris. According to an internal note from the Presidency of the Council of the EU, dated 13 November, which mentions the contributions made by 18 member states, these systematic controls on the basis of risk criteria are now reportedly being applied broadly enough, and the level of these controls has reportedly been increased in some of the 18 member states, which are not mentioned by name by the note.
For France, apart from implementing these criteria, a targeted review of the Schengen Borders Code is nevertheless still needed - and France has been requesting this since the January 2015 attacks. Paris hopes that this targeted review would enable all travellers to be checked, and also European nationals, when crossing external borders. The checks would again be based on a comparison with the police databases and not only on an identity check, as is currently the case.
Work on firearms speeded up. When asked about this, the Commission gave little away on this targeted review. It did not state whether it would take any action on the French request. The College of Commissioners is expected, nonetheless, to discuss what action to is to taken when it meets on Wednesday 18 November. The Commission is likely to speed up work on firearms legislation, where a review is planned, and on common standards on de-activating arms, the Commission announced. It will also consider whether a specific category for foreign fighters should be put in place in the Eurodac system, which is really only supposed to collect asylum seekers' fingerprints, a source said.
The Europol anti-terrorism unit should be up and running by 1 January 2016, the Commission noted. The idea at the time had been to move towards an equivalent to the US Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), with the unit making it easier for the various national bodies to work together. The Commission, did not, however, set a specific budget for the new unit.
A further issue on which France and its European partners want to see faster progress is the European PNR, currently under negotiation with the European Parliament. The Luxembourg Presidency of the Council of the EU and Parliament rapporteur Timothy Kirkhope (ECR, UK) are still aiming to have things wrapped up before the end of the year and, with this in mind, inter-institutional negotiations are continuing apace. There remains, however, a major difference of opinion between the European institutions over whether or not to include flights within the EU in the scheme to gather passenger data from European airlines (see other article).
Lastly, cooperation between member states' police and intelligence services remains a key issue. The terrorist attacks of 13 November, ordered from Syria, planned in Brussels with the involvement of French nationals have again revealed areas of weakness: some of those involved, French citizens living in Belgium, were known to Belgian intelligence services but not to French. On Sunday 15 November, the home affairs ministers of France, Bernard Cazeneuve, and Belgium, Jan Jambon, stated their “determination to work together” and to make sure that all the terrorist networks operating between the two counties are dismantled. The two countries agreed to increase police cooperation and mutual legal assistance.
Other avenues were suggested by the French president on Monday. He called for the EU solidarity clause (Article 222 of TFEU) to be activated. This Article starts that “The Union and its member states shall act jointly in a spirit of solidarity if a member state is the object of a terrorist attack or the victim of a natural or man-made disaster”. Hollande also called for an emergency meeting of the UN Security Council to be convened and for a resolution on terrorism to be prepared. (Original version in French by Solenn Paulic)