Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2007-02-14-Speech-3-241"
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"en.20070214.20.3-241"2
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".
Madam President, Commissioner, honourable Members, I would like to thank your House’s Committee on Foreign Affairs, and your rapporteur Mr Yañez-Barnuevo García, for the report on the external dimension of the fight against terrorism, which has been presented today. It is a comprehensive report and discusses a number of extremely important issues on which we are largely of one mind. The terrorist threat is now, more than ever, international in character, and the measures taken by the European Union to overcome it can, in fact, be successful only if they form part of a coordinated global effort at combating terrorism.
The recent adoption of a United Nations strategy, with the aim of stepping up international cooperation with third countries in combating terrorism also represents an important advance, and the European Union is prepared to join with all other states belonging to the United Nations in implementing it; this is one of its priorities for the future, and it intends to make use of its dialogue with external partners to press for the implementation of this strategy across the board, as also for an exchange of ideas as to how this goal might best be achieved. I believe that your House would, by bringing this issue to the attention of your partners in dialogue in third countries, be making a supremely valuable contribution to achieving that goal.
As I mentioned at the beginning of my speech, the institutions of the European Union are largely agreed on the priorities for combating international terrorism. I can tell your rapporteur that his report and a long-term exchange of views such as that in which we are currently engaged help to deepen our shared understanding and help us to devise suitable measures to combat international terrorism. It would also send a message to those who have been the victims of terrorist atrocities.
At its meeting in December 2005, the European Council adopted an anti-terrorism strategy for the European Union in which the general outline of the European Union’s anti-terrorist measures is marked out, and, at the same meeting, adopted the European Union’s strategy for combating radicalisation and recruitment for terrorist purposes, in both of which documents the external dimension of anti-terrorist activity is exhaustively discussed.
There are three important points that I would like to highlight as regards terrorism’s external aspects, namely radicalisation and recruitment, cooperation with external partners and the international legal framework.
Firstly, the principal object of the anti-terrorist strategy consists in preventing people from resorting to terrorism, and action must also be taken to deal with the factors that can help to radicalise people and make them susceptible to recruitment by terrorist organisations. In its foreign policy measures directed against terrorism, the EU has continued to endeavour to consider every possible issue connected with radicalisation and recruitment, and has shared with its external partners its experience and best practices in dealing with the problem.
The European Union has also broken new ground in including anti-radicalisation measures in a special technical aid programme for combating terrorism. Meetings featuring dialogue between religions and cultures have been held as part of the ASEM process and the Barcelona process, and under the auspices of the Anna Lindh Foundation; the EU has also set up working parties to discuss in depth how it might improve its public diplomacy and its contacts with Islam both within the EU and outside it, and we want to continue to move this forward in a determined manner. Radicalisation and recruitment will also continue to be addressed in future programmes of technical support in combating terrorism and will remain an important feature of the dialogue with third countries.
Secondly, there is cooperation with external partners, and, in pursuing its objectives in the field of anti-terrorism, we have continued to collaborate closely with partners outside the European Union. The political dialogue with partners is an essential component in the European Union’s foreign policy action against terrorism, and the status of respect for the rule of law and the protection of human rights and fundamental freedoms while at the same time combating terrorism as key issues in it reminds me of the debate we had this morning, in which there was a high degree of unanimity.
A considerable amount of work has been done with a number of countries in order to improve cooperation in the fight against terrorism. The European Union and the Member States have agreed to provide technical anti-terrorist support to certain countries that are to be regarded as high-priority cases, and progress has been made in political consultations with others of their kind. The European Union has also helped to build up capacity at regional level, for example, at the Jakarta Centre for Law Enforcement Cooperation (JCLEC) in Indonesia and the African Union’s anti-terrorism centre in Algiers.
We continue to attach high priority to anti-terrorist cooperation with the United States. Politicians and experts from the European Union and the USA have worked together on intensifying their dialogue, and the EU has extended its dialogue on anti-terrorism issues to include other partner countries such as Israel, Australia, Canada and Russia, as well as those that participate with it in the Europe-Mediterranean Partnership, in considering areas of common interest and options for cooperation, notably the provision of technical assistance to other countries.
Thirdly, in the international legal framework, the European Union has continued to press for a key role to be given to the United Nations in the combating of terrorism. Since the adoption of a comprehensive agreement on international terrorism, including a clear and unambiguous definition of it in all its forms and manifestations, would indeed send an important signal and would show the international community taking determined action to counter the terrorist threat, the European Union will continue to make every effort to reach international consensus on one."@en1
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