EU Grapples With Policy Approach to Terrorism

[Lex]

BRUSSELS - European Union policy-makers, who have long separated domestic- and external-security issues, are finding that this approach hinders attempts to grapple with international terrorism.
Among the policy glitches: There is no coordinated civil-military capability to deal with a crossborder terrorist attack in Europe, and no alignment of national armies to EU homeland security policy. Convoluted voting rules slow decision-making by the 27 EU countries. Cooperation is clumsy among national intelligence agencies, police forces and border protection authorities.
"There is a lot of [EU] rhetoric about counterterrorist action, but there are huge operational problems on the ground," Annegret Bendiet told a meeting of EU and national officials and security experts here April 17. "Where's any policy on military deployment in case of a domestic [pan-EU terrorist] issue?"
Bendiet, a researcher on EU counterterrorism strategy at Berlin's Stiftung Wissenschaft und Politik, the German Institute for International and Security Affairs, pointed to "Check the Web," a recent initiative by the union's German presidency that calls on the 27 nations to monitor and analyze the Internet for Islamic radicalization and terrorist activity.
"Some countries are doing this, others have not even started. For whatever reasons — technical, legal, budgetary — we are looking at possibly years to make this idea work," she said, adding that even within Germany, civil liberty groups oppose the idea and are challenging its constitutionality.
Europe's counterterrorist agenda has mushroomed in recent years. According to Bendiet, the union's December 2005 counterterrorism strategy has engendered 160 horizontal measures spanning everything from the embedding of biometric data in passports to the creation of new agencies responsible for border protection and other security-related tasks.
But this program is hampered by two problems.
The first is incongruity of decision-making. EU homeland security initiatives split into those steered by the European Commission in the name of the 27 members as a whole, known as first-pillar decisions, and third-pillar decisions handled on a strict intergovernmental basis among the 27 capitals. Each follows separate legislative approval procedures, whose complexity makes them virtually impossible to explain to the public.
The other obstacle is also legal: There is no formal linkage between the 27 EU countries' third-pillar-based external military and defense decisions and those of the EU homeland security agenda.
In a word, it means the union could not deal seamlessly with a terrorist event that spilled across its international border or within its internal ones.
"It's completely paradoxical," one EU official said April 17. "Here we have the 27 [nations] launching one essentially supra-national initiative after another, and yet they still insist on national vetoes and lip service to 'sovereignty' that is eroding away with every measure."
Officials from the Council of Ministers bristled at allegations that EU nations were not doing enough. The council directly represents the 27 national capitals.
The council's situation center, which gathers and analyzes intelligence from national authorities, "now produces many reports on terrorist activity, and this is coordinated with national experts and operation units across the EU," said Johannes Vos, head of the council's policy unit for police and customs cooperation.
"We're also working closely with each member state to see how they are setting up their counterterrorist structures in all aspects. We all know that fighting terrorism has to be a group effort."
As for closing the European Union's operational gap between external military defense policy and the internal homeland security agenda, some suggestions have begun to circulate.
For instance, France and other continental EU states say national coastal authorities should start working more closely together to protect the common external maritime border.
However, as one EU diplomat said, "The U.K. is blocking this in the name of national sovereignty. Many of us don't agree with that attitude."

By BROOKS TIGNER, Posted 04/26/07 14:09
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