EU Set to Agree Sweeping Counter-terror Policies

Police, security and intelligence agencies across Europe will have authority to hold and exchange data on individuals - and detain them - under a draft declaration on combating terrorism to be agreed by EU leaders meeting in Brussels today.

Under the plans, which will be approved by the EU summit in Brussels, officials would win sweeping powers to arrest and question individuals on suspicion of involvement in terrorism. The summit opens two weeks after the Madrid train bombings injected new urgency into remedying glaring deficiencies in Europe's anti-terrorist defences.

A draft declaration seen by the Guardian contains over 50 proposals which amount to a formidable array of measures in an area of European cooperation - involving the criminal justice system as a whole - in which Britain has hitherto been reluctant to get enmeshed. Whitehall signalled yesterday that the government is preparing to drop its veto over important areas of EU judicial cooperation.

The draft declaration prepared for today's European summit by Ireland, holder of the rotating EU presidency, has been obtained by Statewatch, a London-based bulletin monitoring EU decision making and potential threats to civil liberties.

New proposals include a European register on convictions and disqualifications, a database on forensic material and undefined measures "simplifying the exchange of information and intelligence between law enforcement authorities of the member states".

Another is a British plan to resurrect proposals, previously blocked on civil liberty grounds, to retain "communication traffic data" - a reference to mobile phone records and emails to assist tracking and investigating terrorists. Standards are to be agreed by 2005.

Civil liberties campaigners say that many of the measures in the document are too widely drawn and amount to an "electronic fishing expedition" that could catch innocent people or those suspected of relatively minor offences.

Tony Bunyan, editor of Statewatch, said yesterday: "Under the guise of tackling terrorism, the EU is planning to bring in a swath of measures to do with crime and the surveillance of the whole population. After the dreadful loss of life and injuries in Madrid we need a response that unites Europe rather than divides it."

Other proposals in the document include the setting up of a common visa information system, and measures to make it easier to exchange personal data - DNA, fingerprints and visas - kept on different electronic systems. The European commission should also draw up plans to enable national law enforcement agencies to have access to the EU systems, it says.

New EU laws would set up joint investigating teams and joint measures on "money laundering [and] the identification, tracing, freezing, and confiscation ... of proceeds of crime". Eurojust, a plan to give common rules to national public prosecutors throughout the EU, would be set up as a matter of urgency. The document also calls for progress on the establishment of a European borders agency to set common EU standards for patrolling and controlling frontiers.

The plan is seen as a way of addressing lack of confidence in the ability of authorities in the new EU members in central and eastern Europe to control borders.

Public transport carriers would be obliged to reveal passenger details, while biometric features would be incorporated into EU passports. All the measures, says the draft declaration, would be agreed by the summer. Europol, the EU's police organisation, should be strengthened.

Another priority should be to "enhance the capacity of appropriate EU bodies in the preparation of intelligence assessments of all aspects of the terrorist threat, with a closer linkage to EU policymaking".

EU countries should "continue to investigate the links between extreme religious or political beliefs, as well as socio-economic and other factors, and support for terrorism", and "develop and implement a strategy to promote cross-cultural and inter-religious understanding between Europe and the Islamic world".

The real test in the wake of the Madrid bombings, commentators say, is the willingness of member states jealous of their intelligence and security knowhow, like Britain, to cooperate more closely with all their EU partners.

The EU action plan also has implications for its relations with the US.

An internal note of a recent meeting between European and American officials in Dublin on "the new transatlantic agenda" reveals, for example, that the FBI prefers to deal with individual EU states rather than Europol.