EU, terror & restricted briefings

"We should also provide more detailed information to the European Parliament, for example through restricted briefings."

"At the moment we give the US data and get assessed intelligence in return."

"Improving the effectiveness of the EUPOL Mission in Afghanistan is a particular current priority where such an integrated approach could not only improve the operation of the Mission itself, but also the beneficial impact on the EU's own security. This positive impact on internal security will help justify devoting more resources from Interior Ministries."

"EU Counter-Terrorism Strategy - Discussion paper" by Gilles de Kerchove, EU Counter-Terrorism Co-ordinator [my highlights]

COSI - A new important Council body on EU internal security

http://www.flickr.com/photos/muehlinghaus/ / CC BY-NC-ND 2.0

On 11 March 2010, the newly established Standing Committee on operational cooperation on internal security (COSI) of the EU Council met for the first time.

This working party composed of member states experts from the capitals (thus not from the permanent representations in Brussels; source) was formally set up by the Council on 25 February and is regarded by the Council as part of the major changes of its working structures in Justice and Home Affairs (JHA) after the Lisbon Treaty ratification.

COSI will have the task to

facilitate, promote and strengthen coordination of operational actions of the authorities of the Member States competent in the field of internal security. (Article 2)

Citing from Article 6 of the Council decision, the European Journal remarks that

[w]hereas the committee is required to report its activities to the Council, the Council solely is required to “keep the EP and national parliaments informed.” Hence, such committee will not be subject to a proper parliamentary control.

The scope of the work of the committee looks pretty broad, including a number of controversial security issues discussed in the member states and the EU.

From the summary of discussions of the first COSI meeting we learn that one of the tasks of the committee could be to deal with mutual assistants of member states in case of terrorist attacks as well as in case of natural or man-made disasters (cf. Article 222 TFEU).

Other fields of activity concern "the exchange of personal data for law enforcement purposes", "counter-terrorism measures", "PNR" (Passenger Name Records), all topics on the agenda before the summer, as well as the plan for an EU "internal security strategy" which the Commission wants to propose after the summer of 2010. In this regard, the committee is also interested in the co-operation of the EU internal security agencies CEPOL, Eurojust, Europol and FRONTEX whose representatives can be allowed to participate in COSI meetings.

This new committee looks like one of the new major players in the EU's internal security policies on the side of the EU governments - and I hope the European Parliament and national parliaments will be able to counterbalance its weight in the years to come.

Supplement: In the Council search you can find, for example, the latest agendas or summary of discussions in which COSI is mentioned.

Supplement 2: 16 member states have issued their comments regarding the tasks that COSI should take over. Unfortunately, the documents are only partially public so you don't see which country has sent which questionnaire.

EP says NO to SWIFT

The European Parliament has said "No!" to the SWIFT agreement between the EU and the USA, with 378 votes in favour and 196 votes against (plus 31 abstentions) the report by rapporteur Hennis (fresh photo from right after the vote) which recommended to reject the SWIFT agreement.

As far as I can recall, this is the first time since September 2001 that representatives who have been elected by us have made a bold and substantive statement that the fight against terror may not undermine the fundamental rights and freedoms of citizens.

It is also the first bold expression of the "new" European Parliament. It is the strong claim that it now represents European citizens more than ever before and that neither the Commission nor the member states in the Council can continue their behind-closed-doors, bureaucratic-diplomatic games against the interests of us citizens.

It is a sign that the EU system might actually become more political and thus maybe a little more democratic in the future - if MEPs continue to play their role after SWIFT, too.

This is a great and historic day for Europe, and I thank MEPs and especially rapporteur Jeanine Hennis-Plasschaert for her good work on this dossier!

PS.: The postponement of the vote as demanded by the European Peoples Party (EPP) group had been rejected just slightly with 290 against 305 votes (via @bueti on Twitter). That was close!

No support to SWIFT last week - 23 votes in favour yesterday?

Last week, the European Parliament Committee on Civil Liberties, Justice and Home Affairs met already to discuss the SWIFT agreement that it rejected yesterday with 29 votes against 23.

In the Council report on last week's meeting it seems as if no MEP spoke in favour of the SWIFT agreement, although 23 of them voted in favour of SWIFT yesterday.

Is that because they didn't voice their agreement publicly? Or is that, because the Council secretariat only reported the ones that spoke against SWIFT for member states to know where to put more pressure?

None of the two option would be good, but judge for yourself reading through the following excerpts from the report (links added by me):

Mr Caamano Dominguez suggested that Europe should not show weakness on terrorism, inter alia by adopting the interim agreement on providing data for the Terrorist Finance Tracking Programme (TFTP).

The questions asked by representatives of political groups mostly revolved around the issue of the "Swift" Agreement on providing data for the TFTP. Mr Busuttil and Ms Vergiat (GUE/NGL, FR) were disappointed about the procedure chosen by the Council while Ms In 't Veld asked for access to an opinion by the Council Legal Service; Ms Vergiat and Mr Romeva i Rueda also raised concerns about the content of the agreement. [...]

In his replies, Mr Caamano Dominguez justified the need for an interim agreement, saying it was important not to lag behind in the fight against terrorism and suggested using the nine-month period for a careful analysis.

Also, many individual speakers made critical remarks about the "Swift" Agreement (inter alia Mr Voss (EPP, DE), Mr Albrecht (Greens/EFA, DE) and Mr de Jong (GUE/NGL, NL)). [...]

[...] Mr de Kerchove preferred to wait for the Commission report on body scanners before taking a position on them. He added that Judge Bruguière would issue a second evaluation report on the "Swift" Agreement the following week. On the latter point, Ms In 't Veld reacted by criticising its timing in the context of the request for the Parliament's consent and its provisional application.

Mr Faull, Director-General of the Commission's Justice, Liberties and Security Directorate- General, recalled that the Parliament had been requested to give its consent to the interim agreement on providing data for the use of the Terrorist Finance Tracking Programme (TFTP) ("Swift" Agreement). He added that the provisional application of the interim agreement was a separate matter, but would end if the Parliament refused its consent. In his view, the programme had produced important security leads and should therefore be continued. He announced a general review of the existing legislation as promised by Commissioner-designate Ms Malmström in her hearing and confirmed that Judge Bruguière would present his second evaluation report on the "Swift" arrangement in place at the LIBE meeting the following week.

The discussion focused on the "Swift" Agreement. Several speakers expressed critical views, in particular Mr Alvaro cited several points on which the agreement did not fulfil the criteria laid down in the Parliament's resolution of September 2009. Mr Lambrinidis (S&D, EL) joined Ms In 't Veld's critique of the timing of the new Bruguière report; Mr Tavares and Mr Albrecht expressed critical views about his first report. Mr Strasser (EPP, AT) and Mr Weber (EPP, DE) expressed doubts about the possible "security gap" invoked to justify the provisional application of the interim agreement, Mr Weber expressing concerns that the conclusion of an interim agreement would lower the chances of achieving improvements in a definitive agreement. Mr Busuttil considered that there was not enough information available to scrutinise the draft agreement, while Mr Kirkhope suggested accepting the provisional application and only giving an opinion after thorough reflection.

There you got it: Commission, Council Presidency, and Council anti-terror representative push in favour of SWIFT, and no supportive voices from MEPs - strange considering yesterday's vote, isn't it?

Hillary Clinton, thanks for letting our MEPs decide on their own!

It is an absolute impudence that Hillary Clinton calls Jerzy Buzek, the European Parliament president, (confirmed by him on Twitter*) to pressure on him to make MEPs reject the SWIFT agreement!

This follows direct pressure on MEPs by US diplomatic authorities in Brussels, but still couldn't stop the EP Committee on Civil Liberties, Justice and Home affairs to agree today (result: 29 to 23) on a recommendation to withhold consent to the SWIFT agreement.

But the terror-crazy American authorities who want to desperately access our banking data, undermining privacy rights and data protection standards, will continue playing their fear stories until next week in order to force on the plenary to still agree to SWIFT, despite the negative recommendation by the committee and by the rapporteur.

I can only hope our MEPs will stand firm and follow the recommendation of both their rapporteur and their committee.

In the end, this is an absolute undue interference into the democratic affairs of a democratically elected body, and I urge the US to mind their own business before they pressure on our representatives in ways that go beyond the acceptable!

*Update (00:15): As Jon Worth noted on Twitter, the tweet in which Buzek confirmed he had spoken to Clinton was deleted for unknown reasons. Since Nambu, the programme that I use to read Twitter, doesn't erase tweets when they are erased on Twitter I could just do the following screen shot of the tweet that was sent out around 22h:

See also: Jon Worth's critical reaction to this post and my comment in which I disagree. And Europaeum who has another screen shot of the tweet.

Read also Basteiro who is now (Friday around noon) telling that the Buzek people deny the tweet has never existed although several people noticed it, and I saw it on Nambu as well as on the Twitter page to get the link you find at the beginning that now leads to an empty page.

"No to SWIFT" says European Parliament rapporteur Hennis-Plasschaert

In her report on the SWIFT agreement regarding the exchange of banking data between the USA and the EU, European Parliament rapporteur Jeanine Hennis-Plasschaert has recommended to the EP to reject the SWIFT agreement in the vote tomorrow.

After long explanations on the historical backgrounds, legal concerns, privacy and data protection questions, as well as inter-institutional considerations, she concludes under "6. Recommendation FMDA and way forward":

"Based on the above-mentioned, your rapporteur would recommend Parliament to withhold its consent."

This report by the rapporteur is also a clear statement on that the fight against terror may not disproportionately limit our rights - and my impression over the last years was clearly that public authorities have been giving way to much weight to the first!

The arguments speak in her favour, and I thus hope that the European Parliament will reject the SWIFT deal tomorrow.

Handbook on Terrorist Organisations

Did you know that the EU is working on a "Handbook on Terrorist Organisations"?

It could be that this thing already exists although the search term on Google doesn't produce any results. But in the summary of discussions of the last meeting of the EU Council Terrorism Working Party (agenda item 6) there is a short hint to the "update and distribution" of this handbook.

Oh, and in the same document we learn that representatives of Marriott Hotels International Ltd and of the Rezidor Hotel Group were invited to speak about terrorist threats and the difficulties to combine hotel work and vigilance during the working party meeting.

I feel more protected now.

Legal issues in fighting terrorism in the EU: A response from the member states

The Commission has published a compilation document named

Synthesis of the replies from the Member States to the Questionnaire on criminal law, administrative law/procedural law and fundamental rights in the fight against terrorism

One of the main quotes from this document is the following (page 5):

[T]he absence of problems can be explained by a very low rate of terrorist activity. Some national authorities have not encountered any problem in prosecuting terrorist suspects because they have not been confronted with terrorist activities taking place in their territories.

In other words: Terrorism is not a problem in most countries of the European Union, while it is constantly overestimated by those actors who want to decrease the freedoms of citizens.

Very interesting is the table on page 15, listing the number of prosecutions and convictions for terrorist activities in the member states since 2001, with France and Spain showing peaks in convictions while the UK peaks for prosecutions (paranoia?!) among very low figures in other member states.

Further down in the text, we learn that "Cases of violations of data protection rules in relation to the fight against terrorism were ... reported by two Member States", namely Belgium and Germany.

Altogether, the document gives a nice little insight into how member states' legal systems are handling terrorism - anyone interested in the field will get useful details.

United Kingdom breaches European Convention on Human Rights in post-9/11 anti-terror measures - but just a bit

The European Court of Human Rights* (ECtHR) today has issued a Grand Chamber (thus final) judgement that the United Kingdom broke the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR) by unlawfully detaining nine suspected terrorists.

I am still trying to understand the judgement, because the press release is badly written, but what is sure is that 9 mostly North-African nationals were held as suspected "international terrorists" and were kept in continuous detention because the UK was not able to deport them due to the fear that they would be tortured in their home countries.

Apparently, this custody was not in conformity with the Article 5 of the ECHR (right to liberty and protection from unlawful detention).

Yet, there is some very strange reasoning in the text:

The Court acknowledges inter alia that there has been a “public emergency threatening the life of the nation” (as defined by the UK) which made these measures not as bad as they were in other circumstances (also taking into account that there might have been a risk of mistreatment in their home countries if deported):

The Court made awards under Article 41 (just satisfaction) which were substantially lower than those which it had made in past cases of unlawful detention, in view of the fact that the detention scheme was devised in the face of a public emergency and as an attempt to reconcile the need to protect the United Kingdom public against terrorism with the obligation not to send the applicants back to countries where they faced a real risk of ill-treatment.

I am not fully into the case, but all this reasoning sounds rather imprecise, more like a compromise that doesn't hurt the UK than a pro-human-rights verdict!

Read also: the International Harald Tribune article

*The ECHR technically belongs to the 47 member states strong Council of Europe and should not be confused with the European Court of Justice belonging to the EU

UK abstains when voting on EU terror list

Some days ago I have reported on the decision of the EU to remove the Iranian opposition group PMOI from the EU's terror list.

Now, wondering through the endless stream of Council documents, I have found a document titled "Outcome of Proceedings of the CP 931 Working Party meeting held on 8 January 2009" which looked so strange that I needed to have look into it.

Without mentioning any names, this document summarises the decision to take of PMOI from the terrorism list. And it indicates (taking into account previous discussions where the UK objected) that most probably the United Kingdom might have abstained when it came to the vote on this matter, showing that despite the decision of the Court the UK would not have been convinced it was wrong.

PS: And just out of curiosity I learnt that the CP 931 Working party is the "Working Party on implementation of Common Position 2001/931/CFSP on the application of specific measures to combat terrorism" (the terms of reference of this working party can be found here).

Member states stop fooling around the European Court of Justice: Iranian opposition organisation PMOI removed from EU terror list

After fooling around the European Court of Justice for some time (see my article from October 2008 on that matter), the Council of the European Union has finally decided to remove the oppositional People's Mujahedin Organisation of Iran (PMOI) - without discussion, as EUobserver reports - from the EU' terror organisations list.

This is the first time that an organisation was taken off the EU's terror list.

Does this mean that the evidence brought forward by the United Kingdom in October was wrong? That the member states purposefully ignored a judgement of the European Court of Justice although the "new" evidence was not strong enough to support this position? That the United Kingdom brought false evidence? That the member states don't care?

Or does it mean that the member states in the Council just listen to the Court when they deem it politically appropriate...?

Nuclear, radiological, biological and chemical (NRBC) threats database to be created in the European Union

According to a document issued on 11 November 2008 and forwarded to COREPER, the European Union is going to create a special database to track terrorist threats. Therefore, the Council of the European Union will invite

EUROPOL, with the support of the European Commission, to develop and to host in the European Bomb Data System (EBDS) the European NRBC database in which to gather and centralise technical information on NRBC terrorism-related events and NRBC products and materials which may be used with malicious intent.

This can be seen as part of the Commission's counter-terrorism package launched one year ago.

EU member states fool European Court of Justice - updated

Some time ago, I have covered the European Union's practice of deciding upon its terror list. Here some follow up on that issue:

In fact, the European Court of Justice had issued a verdict saying that the Iranian opposition group mentioned in the previous article - the People's Mujahedin Organisation of Iran (PMOI) - should no longer be listed on the European Union's terror list.

However, EUobserver reports that member states are fooling around with the Court's verdict by constantly taking "new" positions on that issue, saying that "new information" make it "impossible" to remove the PMOI from the list.

"Luckily", these "information" are secret, since

"The terrorist register [...] is managed by EU member state intelligence services meeting in a "clearing house" working group with no political or judicial oversight and with their decisions later rubber-stamped by EU ministers as EU "common positions."

Nice little secret information that are played against the rulings of the Court, and our member states' governments willingly join the decision of their behind-the-doors working group - probably most of them don't even know what they decide upon.

And so, in the end, the Court's verdict do not seem binding for the governments, just because they have installed a secret group that does decides that the PMOI is a terrorist group.

That the highest court of the Union does not share this view, apparently is no reason to have doubts. And it also doesn't seem to be necessary to give public explanations (and I do not mean empty phrases!) to justify their move. Nice!

How can the governments expect the citizens of the Union to respect the Court when they themselves do not show much respect...?


Update (27 January 2009):

Finally, the Council has removed the PMOI from its terror list.

EU ministers for agriculture agree to terror list (updated)

German news source Spiegel.de reports that during the EU Council meeting on 15 July 2008, the ministers for agriculture agreed on a new terror list.

The item was not for discussion or for vote and was just passed silently by the ministers. I was trying to find the agenda, but since the EU Council document search is very impractical, I was unable to find something useful.

The new list includes, acording to Spiegel.de, the Iranian resistance groups PMOI, for which there are no official proves of actually being a terrorist organisation.

But luckily for all humans affected by the list, it were the ministers for agriculture who decided on the future of their lives...

Update:

Please look into the comments to this article to get the hints to the respective documents. Brussels Blogger informed about the official publication of that list and I could, with some more digging, find the respective draft agenda - and the "A" items (those without discussion) - of the 15 July Council meeting where the decisions were foreseen.