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Onwards to the "Security Union" 22.4.16

01 April 2016

"The Commission is today setting out the way forward towards the achievement of an effective and genuine EU Security Union – building on the European Agenda on Security presented on 28 April 2015. Whilst responsibility for security lies primarily with Member States, transnational threats such as terrorism cannot be addressed effectively without a common European approach. The necessary tools, infrastructure and environment are being built at European level for national authorities to work effectively together to meet the shared challenge. But the full added value of a Security Union depends crucially on the use that is made of this framework, to close operational loopholes and plug information gaps. This requires a step change at the level of Member States and their law enforcement authorities, working closely with EU Agencies."

See: press release: European Agenda on Security: Paving the way towards a Security Union (pdf) and: Implementation of the European Agenda on Security: Questions & Answers (pdf)

A new Communication sets out the Commission's plans:

"The aim of the present Communication is therefore twofold. First, to assess the delivery of the European Agenda on Security in relation to specific operational issues and identify where there are implementation gaps in the fight against terrorism. Second, to identify what action is still needed to deal with these gaps and, building on existing tools, to develop new standing cooperation structures between operational services responsible for combating terrorism, in order to draw together the work of Europol, Eurojust, intelligence services, police forces and judicial authorities. It sets out the roadmap towards an operational and effective Security Union increasing our collective capacity to tackle the terrorist threat."

The areas of concern are: returning foreign terrorist fighters; preventing and fighting radicalisation; sanctioning terrorists and their backers; improving information exchange; cutting the access of terrorists to firearms and explosives; cutting access of terrorists to funds; protecting citizens and critical infrastructures; and "the external dimension". See: European Commission, Delivering on the European Agenda on Security to fight against terrorism and pave the way towards and effective and genuine Security Union (COM(2016) 230 final, 20 April 2016, pdf)

See also: EU May Exempt Extra Antiterror Costs From Budget Deficit Rules (Wall Street Journal, link): "The European Commission signaled it may exempt the costs of extra counterterrorism measures incurred by individual member countries from the bloc’s budget deficit calculations.

Under the bloc’s fiscal rules, European Union governments need to observe a budget deficit not larger than 3% of the country’s gross domestic product or face sanctions.

On Wednesday, the commission announced a raft of new measures to be proposed in the coming months to deal with the terrorist threat in Europe, including the exemption from the EU budget-deficit rules."

This latest Communication comes hot on the heels of recent proposals to strengthen information exchange networks and systems for "borders and security". See: Stronger and Smarter Information Systems for Borders and Security, COM(2016) 205 final, 6 April 2016 (pdf) and a related news story: EU calls for the fingerprinting of 6-year-old children (Statewatch News Online, April 2016)

Further reading

• Statewatch Analysis: Commission proposals on migration and internal security databases: a new list of old “needs” (April 2016, pdf)
• Briefing: Counter-terrorism: what the EU is discussing after the Paris attacks (November 2015)
• Statewatch Analysis: Full compliance: the EU’s new security agenda (May 2015, pdf)