EU mulls on multi-year security agenda to meet challenges

The European Commission will adopt in the coming months a European Agenda on Security for 2015-2020, which will reorient the EU's internal security to meet the challenges posed by current criminal and terrorist threats, the Commission announced on Sunday.

According to a fact sheet released by the Commission on overview of its actions over fighting against terrorism, several important elements were already under consideration regarding the upcoming security agenda.

The EU would continue to reinforce the efficiency of the Schengen Information System by even "more stringent, targeted, informed and non-discriminating controls," consider if existing legal penal framework needs reinforcement, strengthen cooperation between Europol and other European agencies and threat assessment bodies, reinforce work to make relevant information accessible to law enforcement for better preventing and pursuing criminal activities across EU and international borders, and reinforce the exchange of information at EU and international level on illegal firearms.

The European Commission will also continue to work with the European Parliament and the Council to adopt EU rules on a European Passenger Name Record system which will improve the capability to prevent and detect terrorism and serious crime in a world of unimpeded global travel, said the fact sheet.

In terms of checks under the Schengen Borders Code, the fact sheet said that member states have the possibility, on a non-systematic basis, to consult national and EU databases to ensure that persons enjoying the right of free movement under union   law do not represent a genuine, present and sufficiently serious threat to the internal security and public policy of the member states.

"Such verification is to be done on the basis of threat assessment, which can be quite wide-ranging and adapted to the threat represented by foreign fighters, and allows for checks on all persons covered by that threat assessment," it said.

As far as the checks at the external borders are concerned, under the Schengen Borders Code the member states must verify the travel documents of all persons, regardless of their nationality, at the external borders to establish the identity of the traveller, it said.

Concerning what the EU was doing to ensure that necessary funding to prevent organized crime and terrorism, the fact sheet said that the bloc had set up an Internal Security Fund (ISF) for the period 2014-2020 with a total budget of about 3.8 billion euros (about 4.5 billion U.S. dollars).

It added that the primary objectives of actions implemented in the upcoming period are fighting cross-border and organized crime including terrorism, preventing and combating radicalization towards violent extremism and strengthening the capacity of member states and the EU to assess risks to their societies and increase resilience to crises.

France has been hit by terror attacks during the past several days. A total of 12 people were killed in an armed attack on the offices of the Paris weekly Charlie Hebdo Wednesday.

Another four hostages died in a Paris kosher market attack on Friday, one day after a policewoman was shot dead in the south of Paris.

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