Easy option being taken on fight against terrorism

1.00.00pm UTC (GMT +0000) Tue 6th Nov 2007

Commenting on the package of anti-terrorist measures being presented by Commissioner Frattini today for approval by the European Commission, UK Liberal Democrat European Justice Spokeswoman, Sarah Ludford MEP, said:

"One day after the EU's Counter-Terrorism Coordinator Giles de Kerchove told MEPs that 'profiling' is unacceptable because of risks of discrimination, Franco Frattini is proposing an EU passenger name record system which will select people for screening based on 'risk assessment', a synonym for profiling. This contradiction makes the EU collectively appear as either naïve or dishonest. The envisaged lack of parliamentary control over this law, either European or national, is therefore doubly alarming.

"The attempt to catch internet jihadists through amending EU terrorist law to criminalise 'public provocation to commit a terrorist offence' is likely to prove problematic. It either adds nothing to the existing criminal offences of inciting, aiding or abetting terrorism, or risks infringing freedom of speech as in the British crimes of encouraging and 'glorifying' terrorism. One would have thought that Member states had had their fingers burned in the row over what constituted race and religious hate speech.

"The best way to tackle terrorism is to track potential perpetrators through intense police and intelligence cooperation based on full exchanges of targeted information. But as EU bosses admit, national authorities have failed to unblock logjams, turf wars and legal obstacles. So instead of cracking that hard nut they take the easy route of undermining civil liberties and gathering vast amounts of data on everyone."