Until the beginning of October 2018, a range of legislative proposals presented by the Commission have been passed, but many important files that should be processed before the European Parliament elections in May 2019 are still due. The Commission therefore asks for such tasks to be accelerated and for all pending security-related projects to be adopted quickly. In particular, the one that is defined by the joint Declaration and the new measures proposed by President Juncker in his speech on the state of the Union in 2018.
Over the last three years, the Commission has adopted measures to reinforce the security of the EU and its external borders. Attempts at terrorist attacks, the use of chemical weapons in the streets of a member state and, more recently, the cyber attack that was aborted in the headquarters of an international organisation reveal that Europe is still an objective and, therefore, security and collective resilience must be improved. It is therefore necessary to gain an insight into the following aspects:
- Protect Europeans on the network. Bearing in mind the latest hostile cybernetic operations, it is vital that all legislative proposals are given full priority. Moreover, in order to ensure that Internet platforms are not used to disseminate online terrorist content, the European Parliament must approve the obligation to suppress content of this kind within an hour.
- Inter-operability of EU information systems: it is necessary to allow EU information systems in terms of security, migration and border administration to work together efficiently and thereby improve the security of information. It is also necessary to modernise the European Criminal Records Information System (ECRIS), Eurodac and the Visa information System (VIS).
- The fight against cross-border crime: the commission urges the European Council and the Parliament to broaden the functions of the European Prosecutor so that it can facilitate the investigation of cross-border crime and supports Commission proposals related to electronic proof, in order to help both the police and judicial authorities.
- To reinforce borders: there is a request to approve the necessary tools to guarantee the effective management of external borders, as with the European Border and Coastguard Agency, EU return-related regulations and the European Asylum Support Office.
To support the efforts of the member states with the aim of improving EU security, the Commission assigned security finance amounting to 70 million Euros for the 2018-2019 period, distributed in the following way:
- The fight against radicalisation: 5 million Euros.
- The fight against QBRN threats, restricting access to home-made explosives and the protection of public areas and critical infrastructures: 9.5 million Euros.
- Support for the application of current norms of the European register of names of passengers: 1.5 million Euros.
- 100 million Euros for Innovative Urban Actions such as, for example, the protection of public areas.
Links of interest:
- Political guidelines of President Juncker
- State of the Union speeches of 12 September 2018
- Joint declaration of legislative priorities of the EU for the 2018-2019 period
- European Agenda on Security
- Security union
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