One month after Islamist terrorists killed 17 people in Paris, including four Jews in a kosher supermarket, the European Union agreed Thursday on a series of new steps to reinforce the EU action against growing terrorist threats on the continent.
‘’The Paris attacks targeted the fundamental values and human rights that are at the heart of the European Union : solidarity, freedom, including freedom of expression, pluralism, democracy, tolerance and human dignity,’’ reads a statement issued by the 28 EU heads of state or government after their informal meeting in Brussels.
‘’ All citizens have the right to live free from fear, whatever their opinions or beliefs. We will safeguard our common values and protect all from violence based on ethnic or religious motivations and racism. This also means fighting the enemies of our values. We will further reinforce action against terrorist threats, in full compliance with human rights and the rule of law,’’ it says.
The nature of the threat facing Europe has changed in recent years. ‘’Terrorist organizations with clear command structures have give way to separate regional cells and now to individuals or small groups who plan and carry out their own terrorist attacks,’ said Martin Schulz, President of the European Parliament in his speech to the EU summit.’
Actions approved at the meeting include the sharing of airline passenger data, tougher border controls on travelers and the detection and removal of Internet content promoting terrorism or extremism.
EU leaders said more could be done under the existing rules to strengthen checks on travellers entering or leaving the Schengen zone without changing the agreement or undermining the right to free movement within the passport-free area, which covers much of western Europe.
"We agree to proceed without delay to systematic and coordinated checks on individuals enjoying the right of free movement against databases relevant to the fight against terrorism based on common risk indicators," the leaders said in their statement.
This would bring the EU closer to the U.S. immigration checks, where border guards check the passport of every American citizen returning to the country, Gilles de Kerchove, the EU’s counter-terrorism chief told reporters.
French President Francois Hollande told reporters after the summit. “The external border (of the EU) must be controlled, so that we can verify who leaves and who comes.”
EU member states want to prevent Europeans going to fight with terrorist groups like Islamic State in Syria and Iraq, fearing that they could carry out attacks on their return to Europe.
According to Associated Press, at present, only about 30 percent of passports presented by travellers entering or leaving the Schengen area are checked electronically to see if they are lost, stolen or counterfeit, officials said. The aim is to move that closer to 100 percent.
Only random checks are made to see if travellers entering the Schengen area appear in a police data base because they are wanted by authorities or suspected of terrorist links.
The 28 EU leaders also urged the European Parliament to adopt quickly a plan for countries to share airline passenger data.
The 751-member parliament has so far resisted endorsing the data sharing system better known as the Passenger Name Record (PNR), on the grounds it would infringe people''s privacy.
But pressured to drop its opposition in the wake of the Paris attacks, the parliament pedged in a resolution this week to adopt a law on the PNR law by the end of this year.
The leaders called for police to step up information sharing and for closer cooperation between EU members'' security services and in the fight against arms trafficking.
They urged EU governments to quickly implement stronger rules to prevent money-laundering and terrorist financing and to effectively freeze assets used for financing terrorism.
But as EU foreign policy chief Federica Mogherini stressed that counter-terrorism needs also an external policy. ‘’The EU’s external relations must also contribute to countering the terrorists threat, which is escalating in certain parts of the EU’s neighbourhood, in particular Syria and Libya,’’ the EU statement said.
The EU expressed the need ‘’to engage more with third countries on security issues and counter-terrorism, particularly in the Middle East and North Africa and in the Sahel, but also in the Western Balkans,’’ it added.
Preventing radicalisation and safeguarding values are also an important part of the steps that need to be undertaken, the EU said, including ‘’stepping up inter-faith dialogue and other community dialogue, and narratives to counter terrorist ideologies, including by giving a voice to victims.’’
‘’Our feelins of shock that 17 people should have lost their lives in the attacks on Charlie Hebdo and on a kosher supermarket simply because of drawings which fanatics did not want to see in print, simply because as policemen they were protecting us, or simply becausen they were Jews, are still very raw,’’ stressed EU parliament chief Martin Schulz.