European Union Foreign Ministers meet Monday in Brussels for talks scheduled to focus on terror threats in Europe in the wake of the deadly attacks in Paris and jihadi terror plot in Belgium.
Europe is on high alert after the terrorist plot in Belgium and the Paris attacks in in which Islamist gunmen with links to Al Qaeda and the Islamic State killed 17 people, including four Jews in a kosher supermarket.
Talks in Brussels were initially scheduled to focus on a strategic discussion on EU’s relations with Russia in the framework of the Ukrainian crisis but recent events put terror on top of the agenda.
‘’The Council will debate external aspects of the EU action against terrorism,’’ the EU Council said.
The Ministers will discuss concerns surrounding the return of radicalised Europeans who have gone to fight in Iraq and Syria.
No decisions will be taken at the meeting but a range of options will be debated for approval at a special summit on terrorism of the EU leaders on 12 February in Brussels.
The fear is that the some 2,500 EU nationals that have gone to Syria and Iraq to fight along Islamic militants may come back to the EU even more radicalised.
The Jewish museum shootings in Brussels last year and now the Paris attack have led to intensified calls to shore up security at the EU’s external borders, increase Internet surveillance measures, and pass new laws that could criminalise foreign fighters.
Already last October, the EU Foreign Ministers adopted an EU counter-terrorism strategy on foreign fighters coming back from Syria and Iraq.
On Monday, the EU Foreign Ministers will hold talks on the issue of terrorism, but also on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict,with the secretary-general of the Cairo-based Arab League, Nabil El-Araby. ‘’We need to discuss with our Arab partners how they can help us in coping with the problem of terrorism. Don’t forget that the Muslims are the main victims of terrorist groups in the Middle East’’, one EU official said.
EU’s counter-terrorism top official, Gilles de Kerchove, who will attend Monday’s meeting, said Saturday that it’s impossible to guarantee 100 percent security and that other attacks could follow last week’s events in Paris.
“I don’t have a crystal ball,” he said, ‘’but the message I want to send is a bit different from the U.S. because in a way after 9/11… the expectation of the American citizen is they want 100 percent security. I think Europe is a bit more resolute and accepts that there is nothing like 100 percent security. You have to accept some risk in society.”
"I think we know [attacks] may happen. Some plots have been foiled, some networks have been dismantled in France and the UK, in Germany, and therefore people are pretty effective, but you don’t win 100 percent,” he said.
One strategy Kerchove pushed European governments to consider is not sending all those returning to Europe from battlefields in Syria or Iraq to prison where they could meet other, hardened jihadists.
“We know too much how prisons are major incubators of extremism,” he said.
In the case of the Paris attacks, the gunmen in each assault had spent time in training with terrorist groups like IS and later in prison together and with other radical figures, an investigation after the attack found.
Kerchove said disengagement or rehab-like programs could be the answer.
“We will tackle the problem in a significant way, but it is a challenge,” he said.
Kerchove also said he feared that beyond the normal motivations for terrorist attacks, a new one may be spurring the major terror groups of today: competition. In recent months a terror group called the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS) captured headlines the world over for their barbaric actions in the Middle East, overshadowing their once-parent organization al Qaeda. Attacks such as the one in Paris, Kerchove said, could be an attempt by al Qaeda to show it’s “still relevant.”
The head of the EU’s police agency Europol, Rob Wainwright, said stopping every potential attack was "extremely difficult" but vowed that the police were "engaged" in their battle against terrorism.
He said it has become "extremely difficult" to deal with the threat posed by Islamist extremists.
He said: "Even in countries like France that have some of the most well-equipped counter-terrorist capabilities in the world, still it is possible for terrorist attacks to take place.
"This means that stopping everything is very difficult. Containing the threat fully is very difficult but I'm sure we will prevail in the same way as societies have prevailed against other forms of terrorism in the past."
He said that between, 3,000 and 5,000 European nationals, mainly from France, Britain, Germany, Belgium and Sweden, pose a potential terror threat after travelling to Syria, Iraq and Yemen. The names of 2, 500 suspects have ben collected from agencies across EU member states.