EU ministers to tackle terror measures, immigration

BRUSSELS: European justice ministers gather on Thursday to study ways to improve the fight against terrorism and confront a wave of illegal immigrants flooding into the EU from Africa.     

In two days of talks in Tampere, southern Finland, the ministers will also be urged to overhaul the cumbersome decision-making processes that can deprive Europe's police of crime-fighting tools or delay the passage of laws.    

Seven years after the first guidelines on European justice and home affairs were drawn up in Tampere, and five years after the September 11 attacks in the United States, Finland's EU presidency aims to give the process new impetus.     

It will first focus discussion on the foiled plot to use liquid explosives to blow up transatlantic passenger aircraft, which resulted in the arrest of 25 people in a series of police raids in Britain last month.              

In the wake of the swoops, the European Commission and EU presidency emphasised the need for new measures to detect liquid explosives, expand data sharing on airline passengers and train Muslim preachers in European values.          

Other recommendations were to target misuse of the Internet and to try to prevent EU citizens from turning to terrorism through radicalisation and recruitment.     

"The diverse and ever-changing nature of terrorism requires continuing effort to retarget counter-action carefully within the framework of the (EU) counter-terrorism strategy," says a presidency paper prepared for the talks.          

The ministers will be asked whether they want to implement the strategy, drawn up in December 2005, with new recommendations taken more fully into account and whether they have new proposals or security priorities.          

With Spain's Canary Islands overwhelmed by thousands of would-be migrants, the ministers will also debate a presidency proposal to increase burden-sharing and solidarity in dealing with illegal immigrants and asylum seekers.   

Some 22,000 people have made the perilous voyage, some in unseaworthy vessels, to the Spanish archipelago off the northwest coast of Africa this year, more than double the previous record set in 2002.     

Under the presidency plan, the EU would finance a large part of the costs incurred by member countries when they determine whether a third-country national who has entered the bloc illegally has the right to remain.         

The commission, the EU's executive body, has been virtually powerless to help countries like Spain, Italy and Malta with their immigrant burden has urged their fellow-members to show more solidarity.   

"It is essential that all member states continue to show their political readiness to share the heavy burden which is now carried by a limited number of member states, which do their best to protect the EU external borders," EU Justice Commissioner Franco Frattini said last month.    

"Experts, means and financial resources to help those member states which are adversely affected by illegal immigration flows" are needed, he said.          

At the root of many of the problems is the Union's outdated decision-making system, which demands that all 25 members agree unanimously about measures on police and judicial cooperation in criminal matters.             

The system "is starting to show its limits" senior commission official Jonathan Faull said last week.             

"We are sometimes slow. We are sometimes restricted to drawing up legislation that is not entirely satisfactory but is better than nothing because it's the only thing we can do," he said.          

The EU's decision-making processes would have been streamlined under the planned constitution, but the text is in political limbo after being rejected by French and Dutch voters more than a year ago.       

The ministers will be urged by the commission to apply part of the Treaty of Nice which would see decisions made with a qualified majority vote, but any change must be agreed unanimously, and Germany is known to be opposed.