Amsterdam, 15/04/2016 (Agence Europe) - On Thursday 14 - Friday 15 April, Transport Ministers meeting informally for a meeting in Amsterdam, reached an agreement at the end of the meeting on adding a point focusing on security for the next Transport Council on 7 June next.
The question of security in transport was also included on the agenda of this Friday's informal meeting (see EUROPE 11531). One diplomatic source informed EUROPE that "this, however, involves the last point on the agenda and the discussions had already been held before half of the European ministers had already left". The same source added that the discussions were, subsequently, very free on the subject. Another source indicated that the discussion also focused on registered names but did not explain whether this was the direction things appeared to be going in. This subject had previously been discussed the day after the botched attacks on the Thalys train (see EUROPE 11378).
Controlling airport entries was also discussed. In this connection, member states appeared to support the status quo because these kinds of measures could result in displacing at-risk zones from inside to outside airports. One European source indicated that, "This position bolsters that of the Commission". The situation in Europe's airports varies from one of the state to another and from one region to the next in terms of passenger flows and risk and it is difficult to have a common approach among the member states, explained a second diplomatic source.
Speaking about this subject, when asked about the number of airports that had introduced corrective security measures following a European Commission inspection (under the terms of Regulation 300/2008 on Airport Security), the Spokesperson for Transport, Jakub Adamowicz, was hard to pin down but did provide assurances that European airports had the best security levels in the world. One source close to the dossier, however, said "I can tell you that there are a lot of them, a lot" (corrective measures, Ed).
Following the recent attacks that struck Belgium (see EUROPE 11517), the Belgian government kicked off the discussions, despite the absence of the Belgian Transport Minister, Jacqueline Galant. The Minister had been swept up in a scandal involving the lack of resources for security allocated to Belgian airports and was obliged to cancel a trip to Amsterdam, before deciding to resign on Friday 15 April. Belgium was therefore represented by the deputy permanent representative to the Committee of Permanent Representatives I (“Coreper” I), Olivier Belle. (Original version in French by Pascal Hansens)