EU still struggling with anti-terror laws five years after 9/11
HONOR MAHONY
11.09.2006 @ 17:43 CET
EUOBSERVER / BRUSSELS - Five years after 9/11 the EU is still struggling every step of the way to get its own anti-terror laws put in place - hampered by political mistrust and the physical fact of having 25 member states each with different legal systems and histories.
The attacks in September 2001 failed to have a long-term galvanising effect on the EU, but instead exposed just how many differences there are in how governments approach inner security issues.
Each member state has its own way of doing things and is reluctant to trust other systems (Photo: Wikipedia.org)
Directly after the events in New York and Washington, the EU was spurred to finally reach agreement on a European arrest warrant, a piece of legislation that had been languishing in the EU law pipelines for years before.
Subsequent attacks on European soil itself also saw short term reactions with an anti-terror chief appointed after the March 2004 bombs in Madrid and agreement on retaining telephone and email data pushed through after the London underground attacks in July last year.
And again in August there was a push for a more united front after the uncovering of the alleged plot to blow up transatlantic planes flying from Heathrow.
Patchwork progress
UK home secretary John Reid last month spoke about a "real" and "persistent" terror threat to Europe as a whole while stressing the importance of the same legislation being put in place across the bloc.
Mr Reid and ministers from Germany and France then agreed that the EU should be looking into a series of anti-terror measures including tightening hand luggage checks; more passenger profiling; increased research into liquid explosives detection; and clamping down on internet sites used to incite radicalism all of this will be discussed later this month (20 September) by EU justice and home affairs ministers.
Meanwhile, there have been some other breakthroughs in legislation with a European evidence warrant although its scope has been watered down - to come into place next year and agreement on tackling the financing of terrorism with national authorities allowed to check any cross-border transfers of over 15,000.
This progress was acknowledged in a letter by justice commissioner Franco Frattini to his US counterpart to commemorate the five year anniversary.
"Five years on we are still fighting together the scourge of terrorism. But we have come a long way and are better prepared to respond than we were five years ago," notes the letter.
Problems remain
But the greater problems remain. The bloc's own legal system requires the agreement of all member states in criminal justice issues before a decision can be made - the EU constitution made substantial inroads into scrapping the veto in this area but it has been shelved since being rejected in two referendums last year.
The anti-terror chief, the Dutch Gijs de Vries, remains a person with a grand title but a very limited job description there to oversee governments' efforts in anti-terror legislation but unable to force them to implement the legislation.
The long wrangling for anti-terror laws to be agreed is compounded by the fact that Brussels cannot impose a minimum set of judicial standards across the EU - unlike in the internal market where it has substantial powers - instead it is up to member states alone on how and to what extent they implement agreed laws.
An example of how this trust can go badly awry was made clear last year when it emerged that Germany could not extradite a person suspected of being involved in the Madrid bombings to Spain because Berlin had failed to implement the warrant properly.
On a similar note, the arrest warrant has been deemed illegal in Poland as it goes against the country's constitution.
On top of this, each of the member states has a different legal system complicating attempts to make common rules across the bloc, with EU countries such as the UK and Ireland with their common law systems remaining very wary of any harmonisation attempts.
According to one diplomat, part of the reason is that member states "don't want to let the European Parliament have a say on these [domestic security] areas (...) and they generally don't want the feeling of losing control."
And as the EU looks to expand once again next year taking on Bulgaria and Romania these problems are likely to worsen with the idiosyncrasies of these countries adding to an already difficult and veto-wielding mix.
Brussels frustrated
For its part, the European Commission is often frustrated by what it sees as the EU's own obstructive rules frequently citing how surveys show that EU citizens would like Brussels to do more in this area.
With the EU constitution now on ice and with it the innovations that would have allowed qualified-majority decision-making in most criminal justice matters and given important law-implementing powers to the European Court of Justice, it has often sought to persuade member states to hand over new powers.
If all member states were to agree, then the commission would be given more powers and enough clout to pursue a justice and home affairs agenda as it does its internal market agenda.
However, this is seen as unlikely by most diplomats and officials.
One EU official said he thought "that route will not be taken for a long time" adding that "it's still too sensitive."