In its annual report on terrorism in the EU (TE-SAT), published on Monday 13 July, the Europol agency reveals a profound shift in the terrorist threat and violent extremism, “driven by ideological diversity, technological developments and geopolitical instability”.
In 2025, the EU recorded 45 terrorist attacks (including 22 completed attacks) and 486 arrests.
While jihadism remains the predominant threat, the agency is alarmed by a nihilistic drift among perpetrators, who are often minors – the youngest person apprehended having just turned 12 years old. For this new generation, radicalised through messaging platforms, online video games or digital subcultures such as The Com (a vast English-speaking cybercriminal network, very active on Discord or Telegram), violence is no longer the vehicle for a coherent political or religious project, but a “means of acquiring status and recognition” in society.
Thus, this group often shows only a “superficial understanding of established ideologies”, becoming the target of a “fluid mix of unstable, fragmented and ambiguous ideas”, which makes traditional police detection criteria obsolete.
To address this threat, the report outlines possible solutions, starting with digital moderation: in 2025, the authorities thus sent “61 412 referrals to a total of 99 hosting service providers” for removal.
At the same time, the agency is deploying Project Compass to target digital networks and is strengthening its technological expertise in response to the misuse of artificial intelligence, now used to “generate and share propaganda” or “conduct preliminary research”.
Full report: https://aeur.eu/f/mvn (Original version in French by Justine Manaud)