Category: 9. Internal security -police cooperation

Counter terrorism – between watchlist and no-flight list

It was only recently, on 9 December during a hearing in front of the Internal Security Commission of the Senate, that the US administration was reassuring senators of the efficiency of the system of prevention of terrorist attacks, specifically concerning air transportation.

From the hearing emerged that enormous progresses have been made since the constitution of the Counter Terrorism Centre of (CST) in 2003 since information coming from different disparate resources (from intelligence, such as CIA and National Security Agency, to security, such as FBI, , the Homeland Security Department and the State Department) have all been collected in one single watch list.

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The new powers of the Court of Justice after the entry into force of the Lisbon Treaty

The press release published on November 30th by the Court of Justice is worth reading by everybody interested in the European Law as well by the every individual whishing to bthe protection of its rights.
The very essential and clear text is the following:

The Treaty of Lisbon and the Court of Justice of the European Union

The Treaty of Lisbon, which was signed on 13 December 2007 by the 27 Heads of State or Government of the Member States of the Union, comes into force on 1 December 2009. It amends the two fundamental treaties – the Treaty on European Union (TEU) and the Treaty establishing the European Community, with the latter to be known in future as the ‘Treaty on the Functioning of the European Union’ (TFEU). (1)
The Treaty of Lisbon makes changes to the organisation and jurisdiction of the Court of Justice of the European Union.

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The “terrorists lists”: new (coordinated?) initiatives of the United Nations and European Union

Something is moving , at last, as far as protection of fundamental rights is concerned for people who have been erroneously registered by the EU or by the United nations in the so called “terrorist lists”.
It is happening after years of quarrels raised at political level by the European Parliament, the Council of Europe’s Assembly and even by the UN General Assembly and after several judgments notably by the European Court of Justice, as it happened with the landmark Kadi ruling in September 2008.

It is worth remembering that these lists are established by the UN Security Council acting in the framework of Title VII of the UN Charter which deals with the binding measures to be taken to preserve “…the peace, breaches of the peace, and acts of aggression”.

These measures aimed notably at fighting international terrorism have been routinely adopted after 9/11 in the framework of the UNSC Resolution 1267/99 (which refers the establishment of “UN” terrorists lists by specialized Committees of the Security Council) and Resolution 1373/01 (which requires all the UN Member States to establish their own “national” terrorists lists).
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From the 1st of January Europol become operational as a full EU Agency

On January 1st the Europol Convention signed in ’98 will be definitely over and the Council Decision 2009/371/JHA adopted on 6 April 2009 will become fully operational.
Following the new legal basis , comparable to the one’s of Eurojust, the Europol mandate could be adapted more rapidly in response to trends in crime and every time that new tasks will be needed or should be modified there be no more need of a five years lasting procedure to ratify amending protocols (as it happened for the ones negotiated in 2000,2202 and 2003).
Moreover, instead of the Member States finances, Europol will from 2010 be financed by the EU budget and its officials and other servants will have the same statute of the ones serving the other EU institutions.
On November 30th the JHA Council adopted the latest implementing decisions needed to make Europol fully operational at the beginning of the new year in its new shape.
A first proposal was focused Europol’s relations with partners, including the exchange of personal data and classified information , the second determined the list of third States and organisations with which Europol shall conclude agreements, the third was focused on the rules for Europol analysis work and the fourth on the Europol rules on confidentiality.
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