Brussels, 23/03/2016 (Agence Europe) - The Dutch Presidency of the Council of the EU has decided to convene a special meeting of EU member states' interior ministers at 4.00pm on Thursday 24 March to discuss the situation following the terror attacks in Brussels on 22 March that killed at least 31 and injured nearly 270.
The meeting will be attended by European justice ministers as well and is expected to provide an opportunity for expressing European solidarity with Belgium and examine existing anti-terror security instruments along with progress on draft legislation. The idea behind the meeting is expected to be to insist on rapid adoption of pending legislation (see EUROPE 11517). No new legislation is expected to be discussed at the meeting, explained a European source.
A raft of measures was put on the negotiating table at the European Parliament and Council of the EU during the course of 2015, following the Paris attacks in January and November. Among these measures are the future European coastguard and border guard agency to boost control of the Schengen area's external borders and also revision of the Schengen Border Code to allow systematic controls of all travellers, including Europeans crossing Schengen's external borders (controls of various police databases, such as the Schengen Information System or Interpol databases), or proposals to boost the traceability of firearms and firearm disactivation (see EUROPE 11513). A directive on terrorism and criminalisation of aid for 'Jihad' has also been proposed. When it comes to the European PNR, which aims to collect personal information about air passengers, a question going back to 2011, only the European Parliament still needs to give its final endorsement, which is expected to be done in the plenary at the end of April.
At Council level, there is little room for manœuvre because all the new proposals were validated on 9 March (see EUROPE 11510). This goes for systematic controls and the new directive on terrorism. On the latter issue, the European Parliament still needs to decide on its negotiating position. Although MEPs can act speedily, as they did in September 2015 for decisions to relocate refugees, they can be tricky partners, particularly when it comes to tools to combat terrorism that have an impact on the privacy of Europeans. The question of the European PNR directive is a case in point.
For the proposals to create a European coastguard and border guard agency, the ministers have promised to adopt their position in first reading in April. The Parliament rapporteur promised that the issue would be concluded before the summer break. At their last meeting on 9 March, the ministers gave agreement in principle to the most important sections of the text, but the Parliament's civil liberties committee has only just begun discussing the matter.
Calls for exchange of information.
EU Internal Affairs Commissioner Dimitris Avramopoulos repeated his call on Wednesday for the member states to cooperate more to combat terrorism. He wants them to do so by exchanging more information among police and intelligence services and relying more on Europol, the European police cooperation agency.
Avramopoulos focused on the exchange of intelligence among member states' police services, saying that this was again demonstrated by the fact that the terrorists were known to the police. He was reacting after a meeting of the College of Commissioners to discuss security issues, and said that the exchange and collection of information was the strategy's cornerstone, and information needed to be joined up within itself and with systems that should be able to communicate with each other.
An anti-terror cell has been set up at Europol and member states should now make more use of it, be more proactive and send experts and resources, said the commissioner. Member states should also be able to rely more on other tools, such as the European PNR, that the Commissioner hoped would be adopted by the Parliament as soon as possible. He also mentioned Interpol's databases and the Prüm decision on the exchange of fingerprints.
Avramopoulos also talked about the proposals put on the table by the European Commission throughout 2015 that are in the process of being adopted. He agreed that progress could be slow in the negotiations on some of the proposals at the EU, but the commissioner denied that the Schengen area of free movement could be a problem, although he said one could not have free internal security without better control of external borders., which justified the proposals on systematic controls and European coastguards and border guards.
A little later in the day, at a meeting with France's Prime Minister Manuel Valls, European Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker said that if the Commission's proposals had been “followed wisely, we would not be where we are”.
Valls once again called on the Parliament to endorse the European PNR definitively, which can be seen as a “symbol” and an opportunity to bear witness to the “Parliament's attachment to the fight against terrorism”. He again stressed external border controls and the future European border and coast guard agency. Without these instruments “it's the very survival of Schengen that's at stake”.
Questioned on radio station EUROPE 1 on Wednesday morning, the European coordinator for the fight against terrorism, Gilles de Kerchove, repeated this need to cooperate. “What the states can do among themselves is structure their cooperation more. This is happening, but I would like it to happen more quickly”, he said.
“I would also like the intelligence services to feed the European platforms a little more, especially the Schengen database, the SIS and Europol, because it's by exchanging all this information that we will manage to establish many more links” between suspects, he added. (Original version in French by Solenn Paulic)