By Martin Banks - 6th November 2007
The EU has unveiled a raft of anti-terrorism proposals.
The plan focuses on air passenger data, requiring EU countries to collect 19 pieces of personal information about people flying to or from the EU.
Such information would include a phone number, email address and payment details and would be kept on file for 13 years.
The collection of passenger name record (PNR) data would bring the EU into line with the US although the measures would not apply to internal flights within the EU.
Other measures outlined by EU justice commissioner Franco Frattini will make recruitment, training and provocation to terrorism illegal.
His proposals also provide for an early warning system if legal explosives are lost or stolen.
Under the plan, setting up websites that encourage violence or explain how to make bombs would become a criminal offence.
The Italian official, who is also commission vice-president, said, "Terrorism remains a threat to the political foundations of the EU as well as to the life and well being of our citizens.
"Terrorists will strike wherever, whenever and with whatever means to make the most impact."
He went on to say that "we cannot be complacent, we have to continue striking the right balance between being aware of the threat and taking adequate and proportionate measures, both at European and national level, to prevent it."
However, critics of the plan, which come a day after the EU's counter-terrorism coordinator Giles de Kerchove addressed parliament’s civil liberties committee, fear it may impinge on personal liberties.
MEP Sarah Ludford, UK Liberal Democrat justice spokeswoman, "One day after de Kerchove told MEPs that 'profiling' is unacceptable because of risks of discrimination, 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.”
She also has some reservations about the internet proposals, saying, "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.”
Ludford said,"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."
UK Tory MEP Syed Kamall, a civil liberties committee member, said, "My concern is how a law criminalising terrorist incitement on the Net will be interpreted by law enforcement agencies.
"How can we be certain it will not be misused to lock up people whose views we may disagree with but which they are entitled to aire in a democratic society?"
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