After the Madrid assaults in 2004, the European Union put in place a number of devices to allow better cooperation on the group stage in issues of counter-terrorism. However disparities between nations when it comes to nationwide coverage and involvement typically stop a homogeneous struggle. Decryption.
“This March 11 is our September 11,” we might learn within the Spanish press the day after the Madrid assaults. On March 11, 2004, between 7:32 a.m. and seven:39 a.m., ten bombs exploded in 4 “cercanias” (suburban trains) on the Atocha, El Pozo, Santa Eugenia stations, in addition to at Calle de Téllez.
The assault was first attributed to the Basque independence terrorist group ETA towards a backdrop of political maneuvering just a few days earlier than the legislative elections.
Nonetheless, on the identical night of the assaults, the Spanish Minister of the Inside, Angel Acebes, introduced throughout a press convention that an audio cassette containing verses from the Koran in Arabic had been present in a van alongside seven detonators, calling for warning and to analyze different avenues.
Accountability for the assaults was claimed just a few days later by Al-Qaeda, which claimed to have wished to “punish Spain for having deployed troops in Iraq and Afghanistan”.
With this declare from Al-Qaeda, the ETA path is definitively dominated out. Prime Minister José Maria Aznar, accused of getting lied for electoral functions, is sanctioned by the poll field and the socialist José Luis Zapatero succeeds him. Among the many first commitments of the brand new head of presidency: the withdrawal of Spanish troops from Iraq.
With 191 useless and greater than 1,800 injured, the Madrid assaults – generally referred to as “11-M” by the Spanish – represent to this point the terrorist assault with the heaviest dying toll perpetrated on European soil.
4 days after the assaults, on France 2, Miguel Angel Moratinos, advisor to José Luis Zapatero for worldwide affairs and former EU envoy to the Center East, referred to as on European leaders to “make an additional effort” towards terrorism: “We want a brand new authorized, political and safety framework to manage collectively, all EU nations, in one of the simplest ways.”
In Brussels, the identical day of the assaults, March 11 was declared “European Day of Commemoration of the Victims of Terrorism”. A date which additionally marks the relaunch of a European technique to fight terrorism, which will probably be strengthened by more and more frequent assaults on the Outdated Continent.
See additionallyMadrid assaults: twenty years later, a wound nonetheless uncooked
2004, the start of a “darkish interval which is able to change politics, however with delay”
“Madrid isn’t the set off, however the assaults of 2004 marked the start of a relentlessness (of jihadist terrorism) towards Europe, which induced the struggle towards terrorism to evolve,” explains Elizabeth Sheppard-Sellam, director from the worldwide and political relations program on the College of Excursions, and a specialist in safety and protection insurance policies in Europe.
This occasion “reminds Europeans {that a} huge assault on their soil, in one thing as banal as public transport throughout rush hour, can occur,” continues the counterterrorism skilled. “This introduces a interval the place we’re experiencing a sequence of assaults on European soil with many various patterns. Madrid marks the start of a darkish interval which is able to change coverage, however with a delay,” he explains. -She.
Two and a half years earlier, it was in the US that Al-Qaeda had struck, on September 11, 2001. Terrorists had hijacked 4 airliners to crash them towards buildings emblematic of American energy – the World Commerce Middle in New York and the Pentagon close to Washington – inflicting practically 3,000 deaths.
“It was the primary time that Article 5 of the NATO treaty was triggered, which mentioned that an assault towards the US is an assault towards everybody. Nonetheless, everybody thought that this was simply America’s drawback,” says Elizabeth Sheppard-Sellam. “It took the assaults in Madrid and London for Europe to say, ‘Oh no, it’s our drawback too.’” London was the truth is hit by a terrorist assault a yr after the assaults in Madrid. A sequence of explosions on public transport left 56 useless and 784 injured.
Learn additionallySeptember 11: “Twenty years later, the assault continues to gas the conspiracy narrative”
Just a few days after the Madrid assaults, the Irish President of the European Council, Bertie Ahern, declared: “These barbaric and cowardly assaults have served as a horrible reminder of the menace that terrorism poses to our society.” On the similar time, he introduced a revised counter-terrorism technique: “The Union and its Member States are dedicated to doing all the things of their energy to fight terrorism in all its types.”
However on the European stage, these choices produce results over a very long time: “Within the EU, it’s not like on the nationwide stage the place we are able to declare a state of emergency and provides the State the capability to behave instantly,” explains Elizabeth Sheppard-Sellam. In 2004, the European Union was made up of 25 member states (in comparison with 27 right now), making decision-making extra laborious. “Everybody should agree, realizing that political points come into play. Nothing is straightforward at European stage.”
Instruments deployed regularly, in response
Toulouse and Montauban, Paris, Good, Saint-Étienne-du-Rouvray, Berlin, Barcelona and Cambrils, Marseille, Conflans-Sainte-Honorine, Brussels, Arras… Assaults on European soil have multiplied over the previous 20 years, and the The EU continues to contemplate the principle axes of its 2005 counter-terrorism technique – prevention, safety, prosecution – as an absolute precedence.
In 2007, the publish of European coordinator for the struggle towards terrorism was created, which supervises the appliance of the EU counter-terrorism technique and improves communication between the Union and third nations. . The European arrest warrant, which entered into drive in 2004, is positioned below his surveillance.
Within the 2010s, a second wave of assaults led to a brand new set of reforms targeted on knowledge sharing. The principle databases had been revised and their administration was entrusted in 2012 to the European company eu-LISA, guaranteeing their interoperability.
This trade of information between States represents “the crux of the matter” for Elizabeth Sheppard-Sellam, who however deplores the truth that sure bases had been the topic of late choices.
The regulation aimed toward requiring Member States to hold out systematic checks on all folks getting into the EU was, for instance, solely adopted by the European Council in March 2017. “It makes you surprise why they didn’t understood beforehand what the issue was.”
On the finish of 2020, Europe was as soon as once more hit by terrorism, notably in France with the assassination of Samuel Paty, a professor beheaded for exhibiting his college students caricatures of Mohammed, and in Vienna, Austria, the place a “sympathizer” of the Islamic State group kills 4 folks. The European Fee’s new program for the struggle towards terrorism, offered in December, focuses on anticipation, prevention, safety and response to the terrorist menace. An EU police cooperation code is proposed by the European Fee in December 2021.
“We typically have the impression of a duplication and even tripling of insurance policies and establishments (that are chargeable for them), which raises the query of their effectiveness,” analyzes Elizabeth Sheppard-Sellam. An effectiveness additionally questioned by the dearth of homogeneity in the best way during which EU member states sort out the struggle towards terrorism.
Learn additionallyTerrorist menace: Europe going through the “technique of a thousand cuts”
Overcoming the dearth of unity by knowledge sharing
“Even with five-year methods, it’s fairly chaotic,” notes Elizabeth Sheppard-Sellam, who mentions responses typically given late as a consequence of nationwide coverage points particular to every Member State, and a precedence given to the struggle anti-terrorism measures fluctuate from one nation to a different. “We should make no mistake, there isn’t a unity, even on these points.”
By way of protection and safety, as European measures will not be binding, their implementation in observe is tough to realize in a uniform method. A sample that Elizabeth Sheppard-Sellam compares to the NATO rule in line with which its member states should commit 2% of their GDP to navy spending, which isn’t all the time adopted. “The struggle towards terrorism is a necessity, however because it considerations sovereign insurance policies (intelligence, military, police), it is rather tough to institutionalize European collaboration.”
Regardless of the variety of laws at nationwide stage, European Directive 2017/541 establishes a typical authorized framework for all Member States and, specifically, a harmonized definition of terrorist crimes. At nationwide stage, laws regarding terrorism varies throughout the limits set by this directive, though Member States retain some flexibility when legislating.
If this struggle is extra of a precedence for France, Spain or the UK, it’s as a result of these nations have been attacked extra and the terrorist menace is extra intense there. “In Latvia or Estonia, for instance, we’re extra fearful in regards to the menace from our Russian neighbor than about jihadist terrorism,” explains Elizabeth Sheppard-Sellam.
States usually act in a dispersed order. Significantly on the overseas coverage of combating Islamist terrorism. If France engaged in a wrestle exterior its borders (notably in Africa), this coverage was not, for instance, that of Spain.
It’s subsequently as much as European states to get in tune, primarily with regard to the sharing of intelligence in an area the place borders are open, insists Elizabeth Sheppard-Sellam. For her, the quite a few assaults foiled within the EU are primarily thanks to those exchanges.
