Roundup: European Parliament divided over counter-terrorism strategy

The European Parliament held a debate on Tuesday with high representatives of the European Commission and the European Council over anti-terrorist strategies. Divisions have been seen on the issue.

Jean-Claude Juncker, president of the European Commission, and Jeanine Hennis-Plaesschaert, defense minister of the Netherlands, as well as EU foreign policy chief Federica Mogherini called for the optimization of existing tools and the creation of new measures in the fight against terrorism.

One of the new measures on the table would be the Passenger Name Record (PNR).

After a debate scheduled for Wednesday afternoon, Members of European Parliament (MEPs) will vote on Thursday on installing the PNR registry of flight passenger data on a European scale.

Even though the mechanism has been demanded by several European countries including France who have been struck by terrorist attacks last year, it has not received unanimous supports.

Aiming to fight terrorism, protect European citizens and bring responsible parties to justice, the European Parliament strongly called on all EU members to draw lessons from the past and intensify the exchange of information and cooperation between national intelligence services.

But the parliamentarians also reiterated, with insistence on Tuesday, the necessity to find a careful balance between private life and security.

Certain people have cast doubt on the efficiency of the PNR as a tool in the struggle against terrorism. This measure implies more systematic collection, use and retention of certain data, such as travel dates and itineraries as well as payment information.

The Strasbourg hemicycle has not shown a unified front.

The representatives of the European People's Party (EPP/right), like the Socialists, have called for the creation of a European security agency which has the power to investigate and even to pursue terrorists.

In other parliamentary ranks where the radical reinforcement of both internal and external EU borders is popular, to accept mandatory cooperation between intelligence services is out of question.

The necessity to promote prevention measures against radicalization, however, has earned wide assent within the parliament.

The Parliament has already adopted last November a resolution on the prevention of radicalization and terrorist recruitment or European citizens.

The acting capacities of Europol, the European police bureau, also touched in Tuesday's debates, will be on the schedule for the May plenary session, whereas the approval of increasing personnel for its counter terrorism center is expected in April. Endit