European Union’s response to the terrorist threat

 Currently, the European Union (EU) is not only fighting against the COVID-19 pandemic, but faced with the risk of being attacked by terrorism. A series of terrorist attacks in France and Austria in late 2020 even though those countries had closed their border proved that the Old Continent is exposing security loopholes which must be tightened.

Challenges from terrorism

On November 2^nd, 2020, a shooting incident caused by a member of the Self-Proclaimed Islamic State (IS) left 4 dead and 22 injured in the capital city of Vienna. As the capital city of Vienna is well known for its peace, the first bloody attack for decades has really concerned European countries. According to many security experts, terrorist groups picked Austria’s capital city as the object of attack because Vienna is the symbol of the conflict between Western Europe and the Muslim world. Prior to the Vienna attack, a knife attack took place and left 3 dead at the Notre-Dame cathedral basilica, in the French southern city of Nice. That was the third attack within more than 2 months only in France, carried out by Islamic extremists. Also in the suburb of the capital city of Paris, a history teacher had been brutally murdered on October 16^th, 2020 after showing his class caricatures of Islam's Prophet Mohammed.

Terrorist attacks in the Europe have set off warning bells that terrorism does remain an existing threat within the Old Continent after a lull due to the COVID-19 pandemic. The confrontation of ideologies between the West and the Islamic extremism continues to be exposed more clearly and seems to be more intense. Terrorist organisations, such as IS and Al-Qaeda, together with new-style fascist organisations in support of white supremacism and other groups inciting hatred always take advantage of disagreements, conflicts, and loopholes in state management to achieve their goal.

A lot of security experts believe that while threats to the Europe’s security have never been reduced, the nature of those threats has been changed. At present, challenges faced by the Europe are not only from foreign terrorist organisations or combatants domestically trained by the IS, but also from lone-actor terrorists who are poisoned by extremism but not noticed by security agencies. Such threats are increasingly hard to be identified. Security forces of countries and international organisations could easily monitor or infiltrate into well-organised terrorist networks; however, the handling of such lone-actor terrorists has been an “impossible mission” so far. Typical example is the murderer of the French history teaching outside the capital city of Paris. The perpetrator, 18-year-old Abdullakh Anzorov, from the Chechen Republic of the Russian Federation, ever had a criminal record. However, he was not on the French security service's watch list of 20,000 objects. His murder weapon was a just a knife, which was totally different from assault rifles or suicide vests used by terrorists in their attacks in Paris 5 years ago.

Recent constant terrorist attacks expose loopholes in European countries’ security system. In spite of the closure of borders and lockdown widely ordered against the COVID-19 pandemic, the Europe has failed to prevent extremists from penetrating deeply into itself for terrorist attacks. More specifically, the stabbing at the Notre Dame cathedral was a typical example when the perpetrator was a Tunisian citizen who had illegally immigrated to France in early October 2020. Moreover, according to experts, a large number of recent terrorist attacks demonstrate prejudices against Islamism and Muslims as well as refugees and immigrants from Islamic countries in the Europe. Differences, discrimination, and a lack of policies on vocational training and employment for young immigrants represent reasons for the rise and dissemination of Islamic extremism within a section of young Muslim population. More seriously, thanks to a new communication technology boom and the rapid development of social networks, terrorists could easily “inspire” Islamic extremists all over the world to conduct terrorist attacks.

Shortcomings in the effort to prevent the cash flow for terrorism

In spite of the fact that international organisations have implemented a lot of measures to restrict the approval of financial resources for terrorism after the attacks on the twin towers of the World Trade Center in New York City (the U.S.) on September 11^th, 2001, such solutions and actions have yet to be effective enough to completely freeze operations of Al-Qaeda, IS or other extremist organisations. Professor Peter Neumann, Director of the International Centre for the Study of Radicalisation (ICSR) under the King’s College London (the UK), even believe that the fight against financial resources for terrorism has failed. According to this scholar, as the organisation of recent terrorist attacks has been changed from large-scale to small-scale plans, it is unnecessary for terrorists to mobilise too much money. Instead, terrorists would employ many financial resources simultaneously and they would transfer money without any banking system. Hence, it would be very hard for security services to identify suspicious money transfers, which is consistent with the findings of researches by the Norwegian Institute for Defence Studies. According to the centre, three fourths of terrorist attacks were prepared with no more than 10,000 USD. Terrorists called for donations and transferred and spent money in a very casual way. The most popular financial resource was salaries and savings of members of terrorist organisations, while another one was from small-scale crimes. Only one fourth of terrorist attacks were sponsored by an international terrorist organisation. However, there was no terrorist network that was completely dependent on external assistance; meanwhile, 70% of the extremist groups were financially independent legally.

Another financial resource which is increasingly popular is consumer loans from specialised financial institutions. That was the way terrorists used to organise attacks in France in 2015. Extremists provided false papers to borrow money without any intention of paying for two reasons. First, they would conduct suicide attacks. Second, they would flee to regions controlled by terrorist organisations. Adopting this method, the culprit of the attack on the Hypercacher supermarket in January 2015 borrowed 6,000 euro from the Cofidis finance group to acquire weapons and even financially assisted Kouachi brothers in the attack on the offices of the Charlie Hebdo newspaper.

Concentrate effort on fighting against terrorism

In response to the increasing terrorist threat, the EU has adopted measures against terrorism right in the beginning of 2021 as the result of meetings between leaders of EU member states in the last days of 2020, according to which they agreed to tighten up security along the external borders and more strictly control articles inciting extremism and violence on the Internet.

A new anti-terrorism strategy by the EU has allowed the issuing of orders effective across the entire union, with a view to quickly removing the articles supporting terrorism within less than one hour. In addition, the EU has allowed the European Police Office (Europol) to access the encrypted contents on the Internet and analyse each EU member state’s database for the fight against terrorism. Meanwhile, the European Commission has proposed the provision of modern equipment for the Europol to conduct investigations into terrorism-related cases.

With reference to the controlling of the external borders, EU member states would record and digitalise data of immigration between countries of the free travel area of Schengen and others, while closely maintaining cooperation with a third country in response to the terrorist threat. At the request of the European Commission, member states would accelerate the modernisation of the management of the EU’s external borders under agreements in line with the ambition to develop the world’s most modern border management system. In order to protect public places and important facilities, the European Commission has mentioned the installation of weapon or explosive detection systems and the design of pedestrian zones which would be hard for trucks to get close.

In addition, the European Commission has determined to prevent the risks posed by religious extremists. To that end, there should be cooperation from religious institutions. According to many proposals, the Europe should establish an academy to train Muslim clerics so as to ensure that messages delivered to Muslims by those clerics would not include hatred. Furthermore, the removal of barriers, social inequalities, and racial, religious prejudices in the Europe is a matter of vital necessity. Such prejudices and acts of disunity have encouraged the formation and dissemination of extremism. Last but not least, effort to eradicate extremism will not be successful without a rehabilitation programme for prisons within the Europe’s jails.

Fighting against terrorism has not been a new issue for the EU so far. However, this fight has entered a new different stage. By implementing drastic measures, leaders of the EU believe that the new anti-terrorism strategy would assist member states of the EU in anticipating, preventing, and better handling the terrorist threat.