The EU on Tuesday announced plans for an intelligence sharing centre to help its 28 member states ward off deadly jihadist attacks, but with limited powers that will not amount to the equivalent of a European FBI.
Unveiling the bloc’s security priorities for the next five years, European Commission First Vice President Frans Timmermans told AFP that the counter-terrorism centre would be set up within Europol, the continent’s policing agency based in The Hague.
We’re creating the centre to see whether the member states can come together more often and learn to work with each other on the basis of trust
“But I’m not naive. That’s not going to happen overnight. What does help a lot is there is a lot of sense of urgency in every single member state that we need to do better in cooperating with the intelligence services to prevent information being lost between one country and the other,” he added.
With jihadists launching deadly attacks in the last 12 months in Brussels, Copenhagen and Paris, the European Commission — the bloc’s executive arm — is trying to promote counter-terrorism cooperation among member states.
Timmermans said many states now see the need to work more closely despite the long-held principle whereby national security services give information to others only on condition they get something equally valuable in return.
Intelligence sharing is not easy, especially when a large member state tries to work with a smaller ally that does not have the same resources and capacities, he said.
Member states also worry if information they give another “is safe in the hands of my friends,” he added.
The counter-terrorism centre features on a roadmap to combat not only terrorism, but organised crime and cybercrime that was debated Tuesday in the European Parliament.
