The legislative proposal, overwhelmingly approved by MEPs with 600 votes in favour, 21 against and 39 abstentions, will make it illegal to publicly incite people to commit terrorist offences and will outlaw terrorist recruitment and training.
While Barrot welcomed the result of the vote, he lamented some of the amendments made to the language originally proposed by the Commission. "We would like to avoid having to wait until a terrorist attack is perpetrated before incriminating those who are planning it," he said, referring in particular to the decision of rapporteur French MEP Roselyne Lefrançois to substitute the term "provocation" with the term "incitement" to commit a terrorist offence.
According to supporters of the Commission's proposal, this would effectively mean that "you can prove the terrorist intention only if people have already died," as MEP Herbert Pirker (EPP-ED, Austria) put it. But left MEPs took the opposite view, rejecting the proposed texts altogether and claiming that if adopted, they would become an instrument for political pressure against ideological opponents.
"This will be an excuse to criminalise anyone who casts doubt over the capitalist system," said Greek MEP Athanasios Pafilis (GUE/NGL).
A separate report establishing rules for processing personal data in the framework of police and judicial cooperation in criminal matters also gathered broad support in favour of substantially amending the Commission's proposals (556 votes in favour, 90 against and 19 abstentions). Indeed, MEPs insisted on strict guidelines out of concern that "the cure should not be worse than the disease" and that public freedoms should not pay the price for achieving a higher degree of public security.
Of particular concern to Barrot was an amendment, introduced by rapporteur Martine Roure (France, PES), which calls for the establishment of a Working Party composed of member-state representatives and a secretariat provided by the Commission and responsible for drawing up an annual report with regard to the processing private data in the EU and third countries. Barrot nevertheless said the Commission would try to "draw the best" out of this evaluation mechanism.
