Europe's anti-terror leaders united against bureaucracy

Europe’s leaders may be at loggerheads over exactly how to pool their efforts in the fight against terrorism, but they agree on one thing – more bureaucracy is the last thing anyone needs.

That is why calls for a new CIA-style EU intelligence centre are being resisted, and emphasis placed instead on implementing existing anti-terrorist agreements which should have been on statute books by now.

“There is no need for new regulations,” said Justice Minister Michael McDowell after chairing last Friday’s emergency meeting of EU interior ministers.

What was needed, he said, was for people to do what they have already promised to do – activate a European Arrest Warrant, boost cross-border intelligence cooperation and harmonise their national laws on minimum penalties and sanctions against terrorists.

That message will be repeated at today’s talks between EU foreign ministers, when Friday’s decision to appoint a new counter-terrorism chief will be endorsed.

Whoever is chosen, he or she will be responsible for co-ordinating and over-seeing intelligence-gathering and sharing between member states, rather than presiding over an all-new department.

But the biggest hurdle to overcome is a reluctance to engage in an intelligence-sharing free-for-all at EU level.

Long-established national police and security organisations dealing in counter-terrorism work in some member states are less than keen routinely to divulge their knowledge to less-experienced departments through the EU.

Different cultures, traditions and approaches to civil liberties are also hampering EU-level agreements in areas of information collecting.

The Scandinavians, for example, say British Home Secretary David Blunkett’s call for phone companies and Internet service providers to keep all phone transmission records for security checking purposes smacks of “big brother” tactics.

The balance, said Mr McDowell, has to be found between public security and the right to privacy, but it will be hard to do.

Immediately after the Madrid bombings, the European Commission’s head of Justice and Home Affairs, Jonathan Faull, briefed journalists on all current EU-level anti-terrorist initiatives.

The inevitable question was: "What new initiatives are now being introduced?"

It is a question which puts EU officials and national government politicians in a spot. Failure to flourish a raft of new proposals could be mistaken for complacency.

But unveiling a string of new laws, anti-terrorist authorities. Or strategies, suggests that insufficient work was being done beforehand.

“The truth is that anti-terrorist discussions are going on all the time behind the scenes. Member states are constantly in touch, either directly between various capitals, or through their EU ambassadors and experts staffs in Brussels,” said one EU official.

“We can’t just pile on more bureaucracy for public relations purposes each time there is an atrocity.”

But what can be done, ministers will agree this week, is to make sure the same extradition arrangements are in operation across the EU, with everyone united on the handling of terrorist suspects.

That leaves the embarrassment so far of not having agreed an EU-wide definition of a terrorist – a seemingly banal detail but one fundamental to any smooth-running of workable judicial and criminal procedures to handle suspects.

First, though, suspects have to be caught, and that is where effective intelligence-sharing is indispensable.

What EU foreign ministers and prime ministers are trying to do in their talks this week is establish the necessary trust between national security agencies and police authorities to ensure that the new role of EU Counter-terrorism Co-ordinator is more than just tokenism.

As always in EU affairs, the stumbling block is national sovereignty.

Countries like Belgium, the Netherlands and Austria see an EU “CIA” as the solution.

But the message from the “big five” – the UK, France, Germany, Italy and Spain – remains that collecting intelligence does not come under the EU’s powers.