There are currently between 50,000 and 70,000 radicalised individuals in Europe, of whom 20,000 are in France. In 2017, the EU experienced 62 terrorist incidents, including 15 attacks that were carried out and 40, which were foiled.
These figures were provided on Monday 9 April during a special European Parliament "terrorism" committee by Jean-Charles Brisard, the President of the Centre for the Analysis of Terrorism (CAT), a European research centre that had been invited to Parliament to help develop the committee's work. According to this specialist, the number of terrorist incidents in 2017 meant that an incident of this kind occurred around every six days.
Half of these incidents targeted France, ahead of the United Kingdom and Germany. Since 2013, terrorist activity has been most intense in France, “with half of all incidents identified” there. Almost 40% of assassination attempts and attacks targeted police officers and military personnel and the attacks were made with rudimentary weapons such as knives and explosives on an equal basis, explained Mr Brisard.
Jean-Charles Brisard also informed the members of the committee that the Islamic State had been weakened but that this did not “mechanically reduce the threat” and a fragmented threat remained a danger. Although there has not been any massive return of foreign combatants to the EU, this is because some of them have been killed in the field or who have switched to other areas. The terrorist threat represented by these fighters, therefore remains substantial, even if the activities of the Islamic State in Syria have been hampered. France registered 14 returns in 2017 and Belgium and Germany fewer than 10.
With regard to the profile of the perpetrators of attacks in the EU, the specialist pointed out that 53% of them were unknown by the intelligence services. Since 2004 in France, 60% of perpetrators of those sentenced for terrorist activities had no criminal records. (Original version in French by Solenn Paulic)