Interview: How can EU be safer after Brussels attacks? Better intelligence, social integration, says expert

How can Belgium or the European Union (EU) improve their security situation after Brussels, the capital of the EU, suffered the deadliest terror attacks in Belgium's history?

Better intelligence governing and sharing, enhanced social integration of isolated minorities, and possibly foreign policy changes, may work, a European security expert has said.

Daniel Keohane, senior researcher with Center for Security Studies, ETH Zurich, made the remarks during an interview with Xinhua.

Bomb blasts hit the Brussels Airport and the Maelbeek metro station in the city's EU district on Tuesday during morning rush hour, killing at least 31 people and injuring around 300 others. The Islamic State (IS) has claimed responsibility.

This came just four days after Belgian police arrested Salah Abdeslam after a four-month-long manhunt, a prime terror suspect wanted for the November 2015 Paris attacks, from his home neighborhood of Molenbeek, an inner city district of Brussels.

Keohane said urgent efforts should be made to improve the existing intelligence sharing and governing system in Belgium and the EU as a whole and make it more effective to deal with terror acts.

It is important "because the only way to really deter a terrorist group is through the intelligence," said the security expert.

"Currently, different countries have different practices, so that's a serious issue. There are different authorities responsible for different anti-terrorism aspects in Belgium, and that is also the case in Europe," he said.

Moreover, Keohane noted that EU countries certainly needed to handle better the big question of the social integration of the isolated minority groups.

Based on the last 20 years of history, western Europe, including France, Britain, Belgium, the Netherlands, Italy, Spain, and Germany, is more accessible to terrorism, according to him, simply because they have bigger numbers of minority residents compared to eastern Europe.

Keohane said the EU now was in a very difficult security situation.

"We have different crises; all emerged at the same time within the EU, which makes the security situation very difficult," he said.

The security expert also said the EU needed to rethink its foreign policy, for example, whether or not continue to bomb the IS in Iraq.

"These are big questions," he said. Endit