Brussels, 04/06/2004 (Agence Europe) - On Tuesday, the High Representative, Javier Solana, is to propose to the Justice and Home Affairs Council to reinforce the analysis of the Council's intelligence, without creating a new structure or an European intelligence agency. This document, accompanied by many others prepared by the anti-terrorist co-ordinator, Gijs de Vries, the European Commission and the Presidency, will be used as a basis at the JHA Council to prepare the conclusions of the European Council of 17 and 18 June on terrorism. Far from speculative announcements, the objective is the look into ways of better organising the work of the Council and Member States in order to ensure that decisions are taken and applied. The date of the December European Council will be set, on the basis of Gijs de Vries's work.
The creation of a European intelligence agency, along the lines of the FBI, is thought to be too premature by most Member States. The High Representative will prefer to develop an embryonic situation centre (Sitcen), by extending the scope of its work and reviewing its co-operation with other Council structures. Sitcen currently focuses on analysing external threats, in third countries, with a Foreign Affairs representative per State. Javier Solana is to propose that the analysis of threats in the European Union be added, with a representative per Member State, from the Home Affairs office. Sitcen could conduct ad hoc analyses, on request by various Council groups and configurations, and could thus help decisions to be made. In its confidential report which was sent out before the Madrid attacks, Javier Solana stressed the lack of interaction between the various risk analysis groups and those responsible for making security decisions (see EUROPE of 13 March).
The Council, Commission and Presidency will present a joint report on Tuesday, taking stock of the implementation of the 2001 action plan against terrorism, and the measures in the conclusions of the European Council of 25 and 26 March. The action plan, which is very long and has been updated, will be accompanied by an annex indicating whether Member States have transposed the decisions adopted. The March European Council set a deadline of June for the adoption of many measures on terrorism, on which the Member States are already lagging behind (EUROPE of 27 March).
Two or three documents prepared by the brand new anti-terrorist co-ordinator will be presented to the Council. The first asks whether the transposition of decision by the Member States could be improved, given that there is no penalty or infringement procedure in the field of legal co-operation. According to a European source, the Co-ordinator criticises the fact that there is no clearer idea of the transposition of a text by the Member States, or the quality of this transposition, because the Member States give incomplete information to the Commission and Council. This hinders co-operation between Member States, says Mr De Vries. The report suggests that the European Commission should proceed to a systematic evaluation of the implementation, and at the same time, for each decision, a Council group should be in charge of regularly taking stock.
In the second document, the co-ordinator looks at the role of Europol, on the basis of an evaluation carried out by Member State experts. He will insist that Europol should finally implement its information system (EIS), whose asbence is universally deplored, but he will note that not all States seem ready to supply important information. The document will confirm that all Member States do not have the same understanding of the role this co-operation office for European police forces should play. Some of them, like Germany, want to give it a greater role, others feel it should be a simple channel for exchanging information, working more via contact between liaison agents of the Member States posted to European than by Europol itself. Not all can agree on the degree of co-operation between Europol and its legal counterpart, Eurojust, and with the anti-fraud office Olaf. In its conclusions, the JHA Council will welcome the fact that Europol has re-established its anti-terrorist task force, and ask for it to become genuinely operational.
In a third document, Gijs de Vries puts the question of the reorganisation of Council working groups on terrorism. COTER (foreign affairs) and the TWG (home affairs) work with the capitals and do not make sufficient contribution to work in Brussels. They hold two joint meetings a year. Gijs de Vries proposes three options: creation of a high-level terrorism group, merging TWG and COTER, or tasking Coreper with a regular follow-up of their work. At an initial discussion with Coreper, most delegations supported the third option.
On Friday, the European Commission adopted a report summing up the insufficient implementation by the Member States of the framework decision of June 2002 on the definition and penalties for terrorism. We will come back to this in our next edition.