home Security Counter Terror Europe is slowly waking up to the terror threat

Europe is slowly waking up to the terror threat

Jan 25, 2015

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Europe is waking up. The Europol (European Police Office), which has new authority to collect information on people who have never been convicted of a criminal offense, is going to be the tool the EU is planning to use in order to create a more centralized intelligence sharing system which will allow security services to monitor and track suspects throughout the union. EU officials are also looking to improve information sharing with Arab countries.

Foreign ministers from the European Union’s (EU) twenty-eight member countries met in Brussels earlier this week to discuss anti-terror initiatives following the terror attacks in Paris and the breakup of a jihadist cell in Belgium. The EU is expected to enter a new era of travel surveillance and anti-terror initiatives.

According to HomeLand Security News Wire, the British government has called for support of its plan to create new databases to monitor all air travel in and out and within Europe. British foreign secretary Philip Hammond said that ministers would review ways to block European Parliament opposition to the central databases of airline passengers’ records.

“We will all be determined to do what is necessary to keep Europe safe from the terrorist threat. We will be talking about the challenge of extreme Islamism today and how we deal with it, with our counter-terrorist response,” Secretary Hammond said. “We will be looking at some of the specific measures that can help to keep us safe, like passenger name records, within Europe. So that is important.”

The Telegraph reports that using Europol, which has new authority to collect information on people who have never been convicted of a criminal offense, the EU is planning to create a more centralized intelligence sharing system which will allow security services to monitor and track suspects throughout the union.

EU officials are also looking to improve information sharing with Arab countries. Hammond notes that the United States will join officials from EU and Arab countries later this week in London to discuss progress made in the fight against the Islamic State (ISIS).