ABSTRACT
Introduction To terrorists, borders between countries often offer more opportunities than obstacles. Outside of the countries targeted by their attacks terrorists can plan, train and prepare their attacks operationally, financially and technically with less exposure to law enforcement surveillance – and sometimes even variable degrees of toleration and hidden support by authorities in the host countries. Countries other than those targeted may also offer convenient platforms for disseminating terrorist ideologies, inciting to terrorist attacks and terrorist recruitment. It is this use of countries as a basis for carrying out attacks in others which gives global action against terrorism all its necessity and urgency. The key roles played by the Al Qaeda ‘Hamburg Cell’ in Germany, the training camps in Afghanistan and the financial support received from the Taliban and charities in Saudi Arabia and the Gulf countries in the preparations of the
9/11 attacks1 has shown the full extent of the global reach of the terrorist challenge. When the 9/11 attacks struck its most important international partner,
the US, the EU had already an established framework of cross-border cooperation against terrorism amongst its Member States which – although limited to intergovernmental mechanisms – went back as far as the TREVI counter-terrorism cooperation of the 1970s. Yet counterterrorism cooperation with third-countries had until then remained entirely a matter for the individual Member States which had not transferred any powers to the EU in this field. The internal focus of EU counter-terrorism efforts was reflected in the fact that the arguably most important pre-9/11 European Council statement on counter-terrorism, the December 1995 ‘La Gomera Declaration’,2 did not make a single reference to counter-terrorism cooperation between the EU and the outside world. The New York attacks led the EU almost immediately to assume an active
international role in the counter-terrorism domain, and this for two reasons. Probably the most immediate was the political consensus that the Union needed to strongly affirm its solidarity and counter-terrorism cooperation with its stricken US partner. The Bush Administration’s catalogue of demands forwarded to European Commission President Prodi on 16 October 20013 showed that nothing less (and even more) was indeed expected. The other reason was that the attacks created overnight a powerful new global terrorist threat perception which contrary to the prevalent internal separatist terrorism challenges affecting only some Member States suddenly made all of them potential targets of attacks originating from a global background. Both reasons together – which were already forcefully already in the Conclusions of the Extraordinary European Council of 21 September 20114 – launched the EU effectively on the path of developing into an international counter-terrorism actor in its own right. One indication of many for this evolution is the fact that in May 2011 the US Counterterrorism Coordinator Daniel Benjamin giving testimony to the US House of Representatives Committee on Foreign Affairs had no hesitation to present the Union – which before 9/11 had been non-existent as an international actor in this field – as being now a major partner as such for the US:
The United States and EU are committed to fostering information sharing and cooperation in the prevention, investigation, and prosecution of terrorism related offenses. [ . . . ] The EU is increasingly emerging as a critical player in European counterterrorism policy and can do much to build capacity in Europe and elsewhere.5
