Big Brother Gijs is Watching You
June 20, 2005 10:35 | by Johan van den Hout
Ever since the EU Summit in Tampere in 1999, the European Union's member states have been striving for closer cooperation in matters of policing and justice. Exchange of information on international criminality must be improved, extradition procedures simplified and a degree of harmonisation of punishments effected. Before 9/11 not much happened. Member states were not prepared to hand over their sovereign powers over justice and internal affairs. Then came the terrorist attacks on the Twin Towers, and a statement from the European Council - the EU heads of government - in its immediate wake promising to pursue the process with a greater sense of urgency. To a series of security-and justice-related undertakings known as "the Tampere Commitments" were added calls for closer cooperation between all of the member states and with non-EU "third countries", for the specification of a common definition of terrorism, and the fulfilment of earlier commitments made in the framework of the Schengen accord on a common approach to immigration and internal mobility. Somewhat more vaguely, new directives were planned, for example on the right to gain access to and make legal use of all telecommunications data (email, telephone calls, SMS etc).
In February 2002 the European Council established Eurojust, a cooperation mechanism of the judicial systems of all member states aimed at tackling cross-border criminality. Plans for this had been around for some time, but now that it could be given the 'antiterrorism' label, things speeded up. The same goes for Europol, established as long ago as the mid-90s but only since January of 2002 given the task of coordinating cooperation in combating serious organised crime and any and all activities connected to terrorism. Following the Madrid bombing in March, 2004, the European Commission decided to breathe new life into Europol's 'Anti-terror Task Force'. All available terrorism-related information in Europe should be concentrated in one database.
Little to show for a lot of effort
In March 2004, two weeks after the Madrid bomb, Dutchman Gijs de Vries was installed as Europe's Terrorism Tsar and the European Council adopted its Action Plan for Combating Terrorism, a list of around 150 proposals grouped around seven 'themes', six of which relate to the detection and combating of terrorism, and the seventh, by far the shortest and vaguest (it contains neither deadlines nor any clear indication of who will be responsible for what), to its prevention. An extract from the plan was presented in June, 2004, amid a great deal of pomp and rhetoric, as the 'EU-US Declaration on Combating Terror', aka the Dromoland Declaration, Dromoland being the Irish castle where the Declaration was signed by Bush and the European heads of government. This document summarises, in 51 points, common measures against terror. Only two deal with prevention at source, calling respectively for more effective development cooperation and 'the promotion of worldwide tolerance'.
In the European Action Plan what are for the most part old initiatives against such things as money laundering, smuggling of people, illegal immigration and organised crime are brought together . The recently introduced European Arrest Warrant is one amongst these, governing as it does the extradition of suspects. If a member state wants to arrest someone in another member state only minimal procedural conditions must be fulfilled. In addition, the US-EU treaty of June 2003 simplifies extradition in the event of a request from the US. This treaty, together with the European Arrest Warrant, is based on 'trust in each other's system of justice' - despite the existence of practices in the US which are unknown in Europe, such as plea bargaining and the use of undercover agents and agents provocateurs.
Gijs will hang on to the lot
Also in the Action Plan, the European Council announced plans for measures to gather telecommunications data for detection purposes. Last December, sure enough, a Framework Decision on Data Retention was issued. All data from email, Internet use, telephone calls and SMS messages must be retained for at least a year. The motivation for storing information on everything and everyone is worrying, as the decision states explicitly that it must be possible to investigate data traffic, even where it involves no-one who is under any form of suspicion. In a Debate on the issue in the Dutch national parliament, Socialist Party (SP) Member and legal expert Jan De Wit argued that "If the retention of (such data) is sensible and responsible, the retention of data might reasonably be broadened to include those of the SP as this would be advantageous to the needs of detection. However, it isn't at all sensible and will deliver nothing but a sea of data within which no detection service could possibly be expected to find anything. This way of going about things could very easily lead to the arrest of innocent people, for example by state services whose personnel are sometimes put under intense pressure by politicians and the media to get results."
'Battlegroups' will have the power to act anywhere in the world
If you're going to have a real war, you need soldiers. The Action Plan calls therefore for a speeding-up of the development of the European Security and Defence Policy (ESDF), better known as the European army. The term 'terrorism' must, moreover, be inserted into the rules governing this army, so that "preventative measures" against the threat of terror may not be excluded. Proceeding from the European Constitution, which gave shape to militarisation of Europe, the member states last November stated their agreement with these newly-stated objectives of an EU army. The most striking of these was the establishment of 'Battlegroups', reliable and battle-ready combat troops which from the middle of this year must, either independently or in co-operation with NATO, be able to operate, if needs be far away from the European Union. Despite the Constitution's demise, the plan is unaffected.
These and other anti-terror measures have provoked stern criticism. In the UK, the House of Lords at the end of last year judged that the laws involved made it possible for people from outside the EU to be locked up indefinitely without any form of trial. The jurist and expert on terrorism Conor Gearty of the London School of Economics feared that "liberal democratic freedom is being undermined through uncontrolled detection methods." The same criticism came from Professor Steve Peers from the University of Essex who said that "The compulsory inclusion of fingerprints in European passports is disproportionate and conflicts with the European right to privacy."
Balance difficult to find
"There is no simple solution to the dilemma of finding a just balance between security and freedom," says Dr Dalgaard-Nielsen of the prestigious American Johns Hopkins University. In her report on civil rights and the fight against terrorism she warned against the quick fix or easy answer.: "Preventative measures come at a high price, and if we go too far, we undermine not only our own democratic society, but also numerous other attempts to prevent terrorism. It can further alienate minority groups from society with all the consequences that brings. In addition, the west's moral authority as free nations becomes less credible if we in our own countries place too strong a restraint on civil liberties." It was above all the permanent character of many anti-terror measures which worried her, in contrast to comparable measures in past times of acute crisis which were introduced for a definite and limited length of time.
Only a broad and open debate on these measures offers, she argued,a guarantee that an intelligent balance can be found between security and freedom. Security in an Orwellian world is not what we want.
Johan van den Hout is publicity and press officer for the Dutch Socialist Party in the European Parliament. This article is translated and adapted from one which originally appeared in the SP magazine Spanning.
Mr Gijs's latest report, which offers auseful summary of the implementation of some of these measures at national level, can be found at this website