Brussels, 19/03/2004 (Agence Europe) - The Justice and Home Affairs of the Twenty-Five committed on Friday to tackle two of the major shortcomings in European anti-terrorist co-operation; the lack of communication between information, police and justice services, and the huge delays in the implementation of the existing instruments. In particular, they called for the High Representative Javier Solana to make a proposal to the Council secretariat on how co-operation between all information capacities can be reinforced. Many Member States, including France and Germany, would prefer informal co-operation to the creation of a new agency, as proposed by Austria and Benelux.
A couple of days off the meeting of the Foreign Minister of 22 March, then of the Heads of State and Government on 25 and 26 March, the Special Justice and Home Affairs Council largely did the groundwork. It did not take decisions on any of the points, but the Home Affairs Ministers, who will be charged with implementing most of the measures to be decided on at the European Council, spoke in favour of their rapid adoption and implementation, with precise deadlines. They scarcely discussed the anticipated implementation of the solidarity clause of the draft Constitutional Treaty, and the appointment of a security co-ordinator, and left it up to the General Affairs and European Councils to confirm support for these two Presidency proposals, which was already raised at Coreper on Thursday.
The Spanish Minister welcomed the "European solidarity", shown by "governments and the people of the European Union" after the Madrid attacks.
The Justice and Home Affairs Ministers are proposing that all Member States commit to introducing the following texts into their national legislation by June at the latest: European arrest warrant, joint investigation teams, framework-decisions on definition and sanctions for terrorism, framework-decision on money laundering, Eurojust, decision on specific legal and police co-operation measures against terrorism. The special JHA Council also pronounced itself in favour of the anticipated introduction of biometric data into passports and visas, to be adopted in June. The Twenty-Five will decide in May on the creation of the European borders agency, to be up and running on 1 January 2005. Commissioner Vitorino declared that the Commission would need an extra 10 to 20 million EUR to implement the European visa database, VIS. He plans that Eurodac, which brings together asylum applications, can be consulted by the police services, which had been ruled out when it was created.
In June, the Commission will present a proposal to oblige telephone and Internet operators to keep data. The JHA Council hopes to have approved it by December 2004, and also the proposal the Commission is to make by the end of the month on the European register of people found guilty of terrorist acts or serious crimes, and a future proposal on cross-border pursuits. The Member States will ask the Commission for a proposal on the security of maritime transport and ports.
"It is not possible for terrorists not to have borders, but the police, justice and information services have them inside the European Union itself", said Spanish Minister Angel Acebes. He stressed the imperative need to "improve co-operation between information services considerably". The European Commission criticised the "culture of secrecy" in the Member States. Although all the States committed to reinforce co-operation between their secret services, a declaration by French Minister Nicolas Sarkozy showed that there is tenacious defiance. "Some of the new Member States do not have an information culture", he told the press.
Many called for Europol to be reinforced. The director of this co-operation body between European police, Jürgen Storbeck, spoke to the Council to protest against the lack of human and financial resources available to his organisation, and to complain also about not having received enough information, according to several European diplomats. To give an example of this lack of resources, Jürgen Storbeck said that Europol only had three people to translate all the information that comes its way. The willingness to reinforces exchanges of information, requests by the European Commission- amongst others- to exchange at European level, come up against the strong reluctance of the secret services of most of the countries to leave the bilateral framework in favour of a multilateral one. Europol needs to convince the Member States to trust it. A Europol spokesperson said that exchanges of security information between the Member States and Europol "could be better", referring not to the organisation of Europol, but to "restrictions in the Member States, due to their legal framework". The European Police Office "has always had an anti-terrorist unit", he explained. After the attacks of 11 September 2001, the Member States had created a "task-force on Islamic terrorism, but after a year they decided to transfer it" to a general anti-terrorist unit. The Member States planned to re-activate this task force.
Enhanced cooperation. Otto Schilly called for centralisation and comparison of biometric databases, databases on DNA and on illegal immigrants. He stressed that, if all Member States did not agree to this immediately, then those that did should be able to decide to do so together. His French counterpart, Nicolas Sarkozy, announced that the heads of the intelligence services of the G5 (France, Germany, Spain, United Kingdom and Italy) will meet on Monday in Madrid to look at the consequences of the attacks and diffuse information. On Tuesday and Wednesday, representatives of the police services will meet in Brussels or Dublin at a level still to be defined, he specified. The Interior Ministers of these five countries had already met in Brussels before the special JHA Council on Friday morning. Nicolas Sarkozy denied when speaking to the press that he wanted to act separately, repeating that it would be easier to act with 25 members if the "ground has already been prepared" between the five countries that have the largest intelligence services and which "are used to working together". The G5 could above all foresee the pooling of indexes and networks, "very complicated cooperation that will be facilitated if the five do so first", the minister commented. In this framework, it is essential to find a solution to protect sources, "otherwise these sources will not agree to giving information on sensitive subjects", Mr Sarkozy said, stressing that this will be more difficult in the EU25. When asked about the meeting s of specific groups such as the G5, Commissioner Vitorino stressed it was normal for traditional bilateral contacts to continue, and for the future framework of the exchange of information to allow those that so wish to channel these exchanges.
Intelligence exchanged on Madrid attacks. Spanish Interior Minister Angel Acebes affirmed on the sidelines of the JHA Council that none of his counterparts had asked him for an explanation or accused him in any way of having hidden the truth after the attacks on 11 March. The Spanish Government had initially affirmed that ETA was no doubt responsible for the attacks and then that ETA was the main trail. Mr Acebes gave his assurance that the Spanish government had "lied to no-one". His German counterpart, Otto Schilly, however, expressed serious criticism, calling during the discussion for all data on these attacks to be collected and stressing that this could have been done earlier, we learn from European sources. Mr Schilly requested that, after any attack, everyone should get together to exchange information in order to prevent them going off on a false track. According to German radio ARD, German services have complained that Spanish authorities had voluntarily forwarded misleading information to them last week in order to substantiate the ETA hypothesis. Nicolas Sarkozy kicked the ball into touch when he was asked about the information that the Spanish government is said to have concealed, saying that "we do not have the impression that any information was dissimulated between a great democracy like Spain and a great democracy like France". Irish national Michael McDowell assured that Mr Acebes had given a very precise picture of the way the inquiry was unfolding.
The terrorist threat. The Director of Europol said that, according to information available to him, he does not expect immediate terrorist attacks, European sources say. He is nonetheless said to have declared that security provisions must be stepped up with a view to the Euro 2004 football championship in Portugal and the Olympic Games in Athens in August. When asked about fears for Euro 2004, to be held in his country in June and July, the Portuguese Justice Minister Antonio Figueiredo Lopes replied that "this is not really the time to speak of it. It is an event at a specific date, whereas the fight against terrorism is every day". The minister stressed that "this event has for a long while been the subject of special attention from the security point of view, but one should not mix things up". Taking up a theme that he had earlier defended during the Italian Presidency at the end of last year, Italian Interior Minister Giuseppe Pisanu insisted during the meeting on the importance of developing dialogue between religions, in order to avoid extremism. Mr Pisanu declared that "what threatens us is mass Islamic terrorism, which is turning against all our countries", European sources say.
Citizens' freedoms. The Interior Ministers discussed at length the strengthening of police and judiciary cooperation without discussing the consequences on citizen's freedoms, several diplomats say. At a press conference, Angel Acebes insisted saying: "Of course, in every State we have a legislation for data protection, but this must not be incompatible with the aim of exchanging data far more easily than currently allowed by our legal systems". Commissioner Antono Vitorino for his part said that citizens' freedoms and security "are two sides of the same coin".