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Monday, 3 December, 2001, 15:20 GMT
EU to push through terror laws
![]() Rights groups say Europe is becoming a police state
By European affairs correspondent William Horsley
European Union ministers in Brussels are to approve plans for a radical extension of EU powers aimed at protecting Europe against terrorism.
The drastic new measures follow evidence that suspected Islamic terrorist cells were intending to use chemical weapons or bombs to attack high-profile targets in Paris, Brussels and Strasbourg. They will enable police and prosecutors in any part of the EU to arrest suspects anywhere else on the continent and put them on trial promptly. But justice and interior ministers are to push the plan through with little public debate. Civil rights groups are warning that the meeting may lay the foundations of turning Europe into a police state. Shock response Evidence of planned attacks uncovered by police and security services has shocked the 15-nation European Union.
The governments want to overcome a host of differences in legal systems and police practices built up over centuries. The EU's dismantling of most of its internal borders has created a "single market in crime". Now the aim is to match that with a "single market in law and order". The plan:-
Serious barriers A number of serious barriers could still derail parts of this grand plan. Austria, Denmark, Greece and Luxembourg all have constitutions or laws which are incompatible with it, as they ban the transfer their nationals to any foreign jurisdiction.
Some national parliaments may baulk at such a sudden leap forward in European integration. In the past Britain has been slow to agree to requests from France for extradition of wanted North African suspects implicated in bombings in Paris in the mid-1990s. The French appear to have turned a blind eye to Basque militants wanted for acts of violence in Spain. Also, the EU bans extraditions to any state where the death penalty may be applied, and is fiercely critical of the US over its dozens of judicial killings every year. Any new code on that subject would be very hard to agree and maintain. Would the EU really refuse to extradite a prime suspect like Osama Bin Laden if he happened to be arrested somewhere in Europe? Civil rights But the most determined opposition comes from European civil rights organisations, some of whom are warning openly that Europe is becoming a police state.
It also fears that the "fight against terrorism" will be used to justify tougher rules on asylum and immigration, undermining Europe's commitment to the Geneva Convention on Refugees and poisoning race relations in European countries. Fair Trials Abroad, which campaigns for the rights of people facing abuses of justice across the EU, says the new measures will make serious miscarriages of justice more likely. Stephen Jakobi, its director, points to the way the Italian police responded to July's mass protests in Genoa by beating up dozens of activists visiting from abroad, and then keeping them incommunicado from their lawyers for days. "We cannot afford that kind of thing in the new Europe," he said. Fierce opposition Civil rights groups object fiercely to new security laws in individual countries. Britain will permit foreign terrorist suspects to be detained indefinitely without trial.
French police have been given new powers to stop and search citizens at will, in the hope of catching terrorists or those who support them. The creation of a virtual European state in law and order is happening in a great rush, in response to fears aroused by the attacks on 11 September. European governments believe the terrorists have forced liberal societies to re-evaluate the limits of tolerance. In doing so, are they sweeping away rights and safeguards of individual freedoms that were hard won over generations? It is a difficult question for EU heads of government who want to show they are doing all that is needed to defeat the enemy within. Investigation European police have made more than 30 significant arrests since 11 September and uncovered the following cells:
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