EU TRANSPORT chiefs have pledged to step up air cargo security after bomb plots in Greece and Yemen exposed a dangerous blind spot in the aviation system.
The screening of air freight and mail from high-risk areas is to be intensified, while national and international security agencies will be asked to deepen their co-ordination.
As an emergency meeting in Brussels of European safety experts broke up last night, they called for existing EU rules to be properly applied and said non-EU countries should accelerate the deployment of more effective screening methods.
Global air safety officials have come under pressure to improve cargo security after a spate of attempted bombings by Greek and Islamist extremists in recent days.
Greek packages addressed to the German, French and Italian leaders were intercepted this week. US-bound packages linked to an al-Qaeda faction in Yemen were discovered last week in Britain and Dubai. Although the plotters were unsuccessful, one of the US-bound devices was defused minutes before it was due to explode. The package uncovered in Dubai had been carried on two passenger jets.
A package for Italian prime minister Silvio Berlusconi burst into flames after the aircraft carrying it was diverted to Bologna.
EU justice and home affairs ministers will take stock of the situation at a meeting on Monday in Brussels. In anticipation of their review, which will be followed up by transport ministers, aviation security chiefs called for the adoption of new measures.
“This approach should involve the effective interaction of intelligence, aviation security policy, strict implementation of rules, research and development and technical assistance to third countries,” they said. “The highest level of aviation security will only be achieved in the EU through enhanced co-operation and information-sharing between competent EU and national authorities.”
However, EU transport commissioner Slim Kallas made the case yesterday that it was important not to “kill” the air freight business with unnecessarily cumbersome measures. “What I am afraid of is that proposed measures could be too big a burden not only to companies but to airports to implement,” he told reporters. “Then we would face . . . a situation where we have very good ideas – some kind of total coverage of all possible risk, but actually we cannot implement these measures . . . and it creates a hole that is even more dangerous.”
While recognising the need for new measures, Mr Kallas said EU air-cargo-handling systems were already “robust”, and argued against developing “different and incompatible approaches” to the same problem in the EU and US. That would be bad for trans-atlantic trade, he said.
“We should remain smart: simply adding more layers of cargo-screening would be hard to implement, and cause great operational difficulties,” Mr Kallas said.
“We need an approach based on risk assessment, better integrated with intelligence, and we need to use a range of control methods.”