The EU Counter-Terrorism Strategy: how is technology involved?

The Counter-Terrorism Coordinator
After the Madrid bombings in 2004, the EU appointed its first Counter-Terrorism Coordinator, Gijs de Vries, with the ambitious mission to facilitate exchange of information about border control, the security of travel documents and to promote police and judicial cooperation.
After three years, Mr. de Vries’ resigned in spring 2007 with the International Herald Tribune stating that a “disagreement over both the mandate and competencies of the job is believed to have been a significant underlying cause of his decision to leave”.

Then in fall 2007, the EU High Representative Javier Solana, appointed Mr Gilles de Kerchove as the new Counter-Terror Czar of Europe to “coordinate the work of the Council of the EU in the field of counter-terrorism, maintain an overview of all the instruments at the Union's disposal, closely monitor the implementation of the EU counter-terrorism strategy, and ensure that the Union plays an active role in the fight against terrorism.” (EU webpage)
Solana commented that the changing priorities of this role would not amount to an expansion but rather a deepening of the post (according to the IHT).

EU Counter-Terrorism Strategy
The EU’s counter-terrorism strategy was adopted in December 2005 and commits “to combat terrorism globally while respecting human rights, and to make Europe safer, allowing its citizens to live in an area of freedom, security and justice”. (EU webpage)

Similar to most CT strategies, the EU’s strategy rests on four pillars: Prevent, Protect, Pursue and Respond. Here are a few points where these strategies touch technology and thus are related to the efforts of the Global Security Challenge.

Prevent:

• Develop common approaches to spot and tackle problematic behaviour, in particular the misuse of the internet;

Protect

• Improve the secure nature of EU passports through the introduction of biometrics;
• Make best use of EU and Community level research activity.

Pursue

• Tackle terrorist access to weapons and explosives, ranging from components for home-made explosives to CBRN materials;
• Provide technical assistance to priority third countries in order to enhance their own counter-terrorism capabilities.

Respond

• Develop risk assessment as a tool to help inform the building of capabilities to respond to an attack;