The European Parliament's Special Committee on Terrorism (TERR) adopted its report on Tuesday evening, 13 November, by 23 votes to 2 with 5 abstentions, listing a series of options to prevent terrorist acts in the EU.
Prepared by Monika Hohlmeier (EPP, Germany) and Helga Stevens (ECR, Belgium), this report stresses that Member States must step up their efforts to share information with each other and with Europol, track financial flows financing terrorism, but also take better account of victims.
The report contains, inter alia, the idea of a European list of hate preachers to enable Member States to know who has been identified at national level. Criteria will also need to be developed to measure the effectiveness of deradicalisation programmes.
To bypass the encryption of communications, for example on courier services such as WhatsApp or Messenger, and to respond to the “difficulties of Member States in accessing the information exchanged", as the Belgian rapporteur points out, it will be necessary to create a European "decryption hub", a centre of expertise within Europol able to decrypt these messages.
The link between terrorism and immigration?
However, the report contains elements that the French Socialist delegation, in particular, considered unacceptable on the day of the vote, with a link being made, for example, between migration and terrorism, according to this delegation.
These MEPs consider, inter alia, this part of the report deplorable, "considering that the perpetrators of terrorist attacks in the European Union are most often European nationals, often second or third generation migrants who have grown up in the Member States they are targeting, as well as foreigners who, in some cases, have resided for a long period in the Member State concerned”.
The report, which will be adopted at the December plenary session, no longer calls for a standing committee on terrorism, but for the Union's portfolio of Security Commissioner, currently held by the British Julian King, to be extended to the next Commission.
Nathalie Griesbeck (ALDE, France), chair of this special committee, whose mandate ends after one year, praised solid work and concrete measures to strengthen citizens' security. She also underlined the symbolic nature of the vote in committee, three years to the day after the Parisian attacks on the Stade de France and the Bataclan. (Original version in French by Solenn Paulic)