Ver Claro: {Spam?} ESTRATÉGIA EUROPEIA CONTRA-TERRORISTA

Contra-terrorismo. A nova estratégia europeia contraterrorista foi de tal modo edulcorada no Parlamento Europeu que “só depois de as pessoas terem morrido se poderão provar as intenções dos terroristas”.

L’UE progresse en vue d’une loi

sur la lutte contre le terrorisme

Publié: mercredi 24 septembre 2008

Le commissaire chargé de la Justice et de la sécurité Jacques Barrot a félicité le Parlement européen pour sa maturité et sa capacité de co-décision suite à l’adoption hier 23 septembre d’une nouvelle législation européenne pour lutter contre le terrorisme. Cependant, il a regretté le fait que de grandes parties du texte ont été édulcorées.

Contexte:

Co-operation in the fight against terrorism intensified among EU countries after the 9/11 attacks in the US and even more so after the Madrid attacks in 2004.

The EU Counter-terrorism Strategy is based on the four 'pillars' of prevention, protection, pursuit and response. It requires collaboration at national, European and international levels to reduce the threat of terrorism and the bloc's vulnerability to attack. It specifically aims to:

prevent recruitment of terrorists;
better protect potential targets;
pursue and investigate members of existing networks, and;
improve Europe's capability to respond to and manage the consequences of terrorist attacks.

On 19 September 2007, Belgian lawyer Gilles de Kerchove was appointed to the brand new function of 'EU Counter-terrorism Coordinator'. In this role, he coordinates the work of the Council of the EU in the field of counter-terrorism and maintains an overview of all the instruments at the Union's disposal.

Autres articles:

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.

Positions:

Austrian EPP-ED MEP Herbert Pirker warned against "misplaced diluting" of anti-terrorist legislation when, in his words, as many as 300 Al-Qaeda cells are active in Europe.

The Party of European Socialists issued a statement describing the agreement reached as "a lowest common denominator" and calling for further measures to improve the processing of private data. In particular, the PES group stands for prohibiting the use of data relative to ethnic origin, sexual orientation, health, religious or political beliefs. The text, initially proposed by the Council, allowed for such processing of data "only when this is strictly necessary and when the domestic law provides adequate standards".

ALDE MEP Baroness Sarah Ludford (UK) commented on privacy protection regarding the use of personal data for policing and law enforcement by saying that the resulting text amounts to the "lowest common denominator". "We have seen the outrage in the UK of local councils having access to personal details, ostensibly kept for purposes of tackling terrorism and serious crime, to check up on eligibility for school places […] It is illegitimate to go on making laws like this without MEPs having the full right to co-decision. This is the price of the non-ratification of the Lisbon Treaty which will at last make EU policing laws transparent and democratic," said Sarah Ludford.

Socialist MEP Iliana Malinova Iotova (Bulgaria) appealed for the strengthening of national supervisory authorities' powers in data protection and opposed the text proposed by the Council, which limits the scope of the data protection legislation in cases of "essential national security interests and specific intelligence activities in the field of national security". She warned that such wording would open the door for abuse. Iotova added that "national security" was a very wide concept, pointing to the recent situation in her country, where the State Agency for National Security had prevented a leakage of health files from the National Health Insurance Fund to private pharmaceutical businesses.

Liens

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