Europe, Headlines

POLITICS-EU: Madrid Resolutions Fade Away

Stefania Bianchi

BRUSSELS, Mar 9 2005 (IPS) - One year after the Madrid train bombs that shook the European Union, some experts say the bloc is making little progress in implementing and enforcing new anti-terrorism measures.

Some 191 people were killed in the train bombs which hit the Spanish capital last March 11.

Just as the Sep. 11 terrorist attacks in the United States triggered emergency measures throughout the world, the March 11 Madrid bombings jolted the European Union (EU) and its member states into action in the war against terrorism.

Immediately after the deadly Spanish attacks, EU leaders pledged "to do everything within their power to combat all forms of terrorism" and the bloc took steps to introduce a new package of anti-terrorist measures.

The European Council made up of the heads of states of the 25 EU member states issued a declaration calling on EU members to implement "as a matter of urgency" the measures set out in the 2001 Plan of Action against Terrorism, which included the establishment of a Europe-wide arrest warrant and the introduction of a new anti-terrorism coordinator to harmonise the new proposals.

Under the guidance of EU foreign policy chief Javier Solana, the coordinator, Dutchman Gijs de Vries’s key tasks include pressing EU member states to transpose EU directives into national legislation, while also talking, for example, to U.S. authorities about maritime safety.

However, almost one year after his appointment, de Vries and other security experts are questioning the limitations of his role and the EU’s fight against terrorism which largely remains in the hands of the bloc’s 25 national governments.

In an interview with the British Financial Times newspaper earlier this week, de Vries said intelligence exchange networks are still in their infancy and coordination between the judiciary and the police is poor.

The EU’s first anti-terror coordinator also acknowledges that Brussels has no power in the security sphere and that his role is limited to monitoring member states’ efforts to improve security and to improving coordination between them.

"The main thrust of Europe’s defence against terrorism remains firmly at the level of national governments," he said. "My responsibility is to ensure that the different councils (of EU ministers) work together. Security remains a national competence and is a political decision made by our leaders."

He also noted that more needs to be done within member states. "In several of our countries we must do more to speed up the implementation of our legislation."

One of the most immediate measures imposed in the wake of the Madrid bombing concerned a clampdown on funding. The limit above for declaring cash being taken across borders was lowered to 10,000 euros (13,300 dollars).

EU member states are also working to harmonise rules on keeping records of phone calls or electronic data transfer, obliging them to be held for at least a year as opposed to the couple of months currently usual.

But many of these measures have been disrupted by disagreements on practical details, or have simply not been put into effect yet.

Reaching a consensus at the EU level is further complicated by the fact that national responses to the terrorism threat vary widely, due to differing legal traditions and the extent to which terrorism has directly affected each state..

Therefore, critics say the EU has in the past year made little progress in coordinating and enforcing measures involving intelligence swapping and judicial and police. And for those measures that the EU has been able to introduce, implementation and approval have been dogged with political wrangling and bureaucracy.

There is also the problem of power-sharing. While the EU has announced several proposals to strengthen cooperation on data exchange between judiciaries and police forces, the concrete steps are down to individual member states. The EU lacks any real powers to punish them if they fail to deliver on their commitments.

One of the toughest challenges has been the sensitive area of intelligence-sharing between countries.

Although the European Commission plans to make any information available in one country available in all other EU states, so far this principle has been difficult to enforce because certain information requires judicial authorisation in one country but not in others.

There has also been much criticism about the involvement of Europol, the European police agency, since the bombings. Shortly after the attacks, Europol reactivated its counter-terrorist task force, but it still only has only about 30 analysts working on the subject.

It also took EU member states a full year to agree on the choice of German Max-Peter Ratzel as the new head of the pan-European police agency. A decision on where a new EU body to monitor its external borders should be based has also yet to be made.

Daniel Keohane, senior research fellow for security and defence policy at the London-based Centre for European Reform says that while EU rhetoric over anti-terrorism measures was notable following the Madrid bombings, the reality is far less impressive.

"If you look at all the measures that the EU has tried to implement since last year it looks impressive on paper, there are over a hundred measures ranging form the common arrest warrant to cooperation on curbing terrorist funding. However the reality is that there is not much the EU can do beyond coordination," he told IPS Wednesday. "The EU is just not an actor as people might have expected a year ago."

Keohane says that while de Vries is doing the best he can in his current role, his powers should be increased. "De Vries is in a very difficult position because he just trying to keep the process going. In my opinion he should be given more power and a budget at least to help other countries with anti-terrorism training for example," he said.

Keohane has acknowledged that such prospects are unrealistic in the near future. "Security policy goes to the heart of national policy and governments are not willing to hand such powers over to the EU," he said.