Ministers approve internal security strategy that identifies six core threats.
The European Union’s home affairs ministers today adopted a new internal security strategy intended to guide the Union’s work in countering transnational security threats.
They also approved a new standing committee to oversee co-operation by member states on internal security.
The strategy will now go to EU leaders for their endorsement at the spring European Council, which is scheduled to take place on 25-26 March. The European Commission will then be asked to translate the document into concrete tasks.
Like the external security strategy that the EU updated in 2008, the internal security strategy takes a broad view of the concept of security. It identifies six significant common threats: terrorism, serious and organised crime, cyber-crime, cross-border crime, violence, and natural and man-made disasters. The strategy also includes a seventh, catch-all category of “common phenomena which pose safety and security threats to people across Europe”, such as road traffic accidents.
Cecilia Malmström, European commissioner for home affairs, announced that she will put forward a series of initiatives in the spring to address these threats. Among the earliest will be a communication on cyber-crime, an area that has received increased attention in recent months. Yesterday, Malmström presented Commission proposals for strengthening Frontex, the EU’s external border management agency.
In presenting the internal security strategy today with Alfredo Pérez Rubalcaba, Spain’s interior minister, Malmström said that she would compile a review of all instruments relating to internal security in the coming months.
The internal security strategy places great emphasis on anticipation and prevention, based on intelligence work. Improved information exchange among various national and EU agencies and bodies is at the heart of the strategy.
Among the few concrete mechanisms suggested in the strategy is a European Passenger Names Record (PNR) system. Currently, data of airline passengers is exchanged with the United States, but not between EU member states.
Follow-up of the strategy has been entrusted to the Standing Committee on Operational Co-operation on Internal Security (COSI), a body also established today following a provision in the Lisbon treaty. COSI, which was substantially prepared by Sweden when it held the EU’s presidency in the second half of last year, is to subsume the work of an EU-level task force of national police chiefs and is scheduled to convene on 11 March under the chairmanship of the head of the Guardia Civil, Spain’s national police.
COSI will also further develop the strategy and monitor its implementation by member states. It will co-ordinate the member states’ police and customs co-operation, the protection of the EU’s external borders and judicial co-operation in criminal matters with an internal security dimension. It will also ensure that the EU’s agencies in the field – such as Europol, Frontex and Eurojust – work together and with national authorities.
The precise scope and tasks for COSI remain to be established; today’s decision merely provides for its establishment.
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