Großbritannien fordert EU-Anti-Terror-Rat[en] 

The special meeting called by UK Home Secretary Charles Clarke, now President of the EU Justice and Home Affairs Council, will set priorities for immediate action, likely to be data retention, European evidence warrant and exchange of police and judicial information.

It is not likely that any new anti-terror measures at EU level will be proposed in the wake of the London attacks, but prioritised timetables may be set for those already in the pipeline. This was the message of Jonathan Faull Director-General for Justice and Home Affairs, who, at a press briefing on Friday 10 July, set out the measures already in place and those soon to come.

There is no need for new strategies, said Faull, as terrorism is "not a new policy challenge: it is a constant policy challenge".

The EU has been working steadily to strengthen its mechanisms to combat terrorism and that work will continue as planned although it will be with a renewed sense of urgency following the London atrocities.

New priorites

Reports indicate that on 13 July top of the agenda will be:

• Data retention: measures to require telecoms companies and internet providers to keep details of phone and web communications for at least a year. The content of calls and e-mails would not be kept, but details of the sender, recipient, time, duration and location would be held. A recent proposal on this from UK and France faced much opposition from telecoms companies and the European Parliament. There will now be a Commission proposal for a directive; 
• New measure on data protection: a specific proposal to protect privacy will be issued in parallel with the above data retention proposal. 
• European evidence warrant: plans to allow police to seek evidence within other member states were put forward in February this year (see EurActiv 25 Feb) and may now be brought forward.
• Measures to improve police and intelligence systems co-operation. 

Other measures

Faull would not be precise about dates but the following measures would be forthcoming – some within weeks, others before the end of the year:

• paper on radicalisation: this will examine the means by which and the reasons why people, especially young men, are being drawn into violent radical  groups;
• measures to implement the principle of availability i.e. that all member states should, as and when necessary, have access to all information held by other member states;
• study on the capacities of new member states on combating terrorism;
• revised action plan on terrorism: this is done anyway every six months. The last update was published in June.

Radicalisation

Speculation is rife in the UK that the London bombs were the work of a ‘home-grown’ radical group rather than attackers form outside the UK. This worrying theory, together with a recent UK civil service report, is likely to put the radicalisation issue to the top of the UK Presidency agenda. According to the UK newspaper the Sunday Times, the civil service study shows that an increasing number of disaffected British-born Muslims are turning to extremism. Such potential terrorists are extremely hard to identify as they are not linked to international groups and have no prior record of criminal activity.

Implementation

After the Madrid bombings, it was recognised that member states were not moving quickly enough to implement anti-terrorism measures. Antonio Vitorino (then Justice Commissioner) called for increased efforts and Gijs de Vries was appointed to oversee progress on implementation. Jonathan Faull stressed that the position was now greatly improved: not all measures were wholly in place in all member states - and more could always be done – but largely, measures are being put into action. Member states, even those which had never on their territory suffered a terrorist attack, understood that an attack against any member state was an attack against all and that the threat for all was equally real.

The data retention measure is likely to be met with approval by the majority of EU ministers with disagreement remaining over time periods. EU Justice Commissioner Frattini has suggested six months for e-mails and a year for phone calls while Charles Clarke is though to favour a longer period of up to three years.

The Parliament is likely to oppose a data retention plan as it was extremely scathing when the issue was last raised and unanimously rejected it (see EurActiv 7 June 2005).

Telecoms companies are also very concerned about data retention proposals, pointing out the huge costs of such a scheme, which would inevitably be passed on to consumers.

Frattini has also stressed that an essential part of any data retention proposal would be a new data protection measure specifically for third pillar measures. This would be necessary to reassure citizens that their privacy would not be violated.

The French Foreign Minister Philippe Douste-Blazy, has announced that the introduction of biometrics into visas will become standard by the end of 2007.

On 8 July 2005, the German Parliament approved a plan  to introduce biometric passports containing digital photographs from November 2005, with fingerprints to be included from 2007.