EU moves on terrorism

European Union justice ministers yesterday put flesh on the bones of a counter-terrorism strategy after the bombing atrocities…

European Union justice ministers yesterday put flesh on the bones of a counter-terrorism strategy after the bombing atrocities in Madrid last week. It is a work in progress drawing on established initiatives as well as new proposals more specifically reflecting these awful events.

It will be brought more closely together at next week's EU summit in Brussels. The most important ingredient is a new political will to co-operate and show solidarity with the victims of this disaster. Balancing the need for effective security against the protection of civil liberties will be a real challenge for the work involved.

The growing confirmation that a Moroccan-based al-Qaeda cell was responsible, rather than the Basque organisation, Eta, has given this crisis a deeper European significance. Where Spain began, other states could follow if co-operation and solidarity are not intensified. But there are many legal political and structural barriers in the way. By their nature security and intelligence information is jealously guarded at national level. Military, security and police executives responsible for it prefer to work through existing channels rather than set up new organisations. There is much mutual suspicion involved - including a fear that others will breach secrecy.

As a result the record is patchy in tracking networks of the groups which plan such attacks. Very little was known in advance about planning for the Madrid bombings. The Spanish authorities were preoccupied with Eta and the war in Iraq; but most Europeans now believe the war has made the problem of terrorism worse, not better. The real test of whatever is agreed next week is how it can head off, prevent or deter planned attacks - information that may not be publicised if such efforts are successful.

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The range of instruments covered by yesterday's meeting is impressive. More exchange of information on convictions is planned, creating a register that can be commonly consulted. While ambitious proposals to create a European CIA have been rejected, responsibility for pooling intelligence will be vested in one person working from a specific office in Brussels. Compensation for victims will be more effectively organised. Police chiefs and Europol are to step up co-operation. All this activity will be co-ordinated with the United Nations and factored into transatlantic relations.

Invocation of the solidarity clause from the EU's draft constitutional treaty has symbolic and political importance. It signifies that anyone planning terrorist attacks in the EU will face a formidable and determined response from its member-states. Alongside such solidarity there should be two further dimensions to this work: a determination to protect democratic rights and the rule of law as security measures intensify. And such inward-looking solidarity must be accompanied by equally resolute efforts to prevent such terrorism by developing better relations with the countries and societies from which it originates.