Excellencies, Ladies and Gentlemen,
I would like to start by thanking you for the honour of this invitation to this event, which is poignant, both for the tragic anniversary it commemorates; but also for the context in which it takes place.
The events in New Zealand last Friday, but also in Utrecht on Monday are a powerful reminder, that terrorism as a threat, is multifaceted, global and not abating.
Terrorism is constantly evolving and is being utilised as a means to an end by extremists of many colours.
It is three years since the terrorist attacks in Brussels and the memories are still alive.
All of us still remember that morning, when the heart of Brussels was hit by terrorist attacks, leaving many victims and injured people behind, and leaving all of us with a PROFOUND sense of shock about what is happening to our societies.
This was the same feeling experienced by citizens of Christchurch and New Zealand, and so many other places around the world that have been struck by such violence.
Not only today, but every day we pay tribute to their memories. We will never forget – and in our respective roles as politicians, as policymakers, law enforcement or simple citizens – we vow never to be cowered by terrorism.
I have to be frank that when I took office as European Commissioner for Migration, Home Affairs and Citizenship in 2014, nothing could have prepared me for what was to follow.
Within a few months, both migration and security were at the top of the global political agenda, because Europe was grappling – unprepared – with two parallel and at times mutually reinforcing crises.
On the one hand the arrivals of thousands upon thousands of refugees and migrants on Greek and Italian shores.
On the other, the terrorist attacks – first with Charlie Hebdo, then with the foiled attack on the Thalys train, the Bataclan, Brussels and the many that followed.
And while there was never anything inevitable in terms of the connection between migration and terrorism – we were also not naïve: we knew that there were links and that a better management of our external borders is essential.
It was clear that something about the way we worked on security in Europe had to change. That efforts had to come together, and that the attacks, painful as they were, they also HAD to serve to all of us as a lesson.
The old way of doing business on security was not sustainable anymore. A new framework, based on trust and unity of purpose had to be built.
That is how I came to put forward the idea of a genuine and effective Security Union in Europe, in April 2016. A Union in which the internal security of one Member State is the internal security of all Member States.
Where we all understand that fragmentation makes all of us vulnerable, and we work together to close down the space in which terrorists operate, and together we deny them the means to act.
A Security Union which not only protects our citizens at home, but also gives Europe a strong voice on the global stage, as a formidable actor at all international security fora.
From those modest beginnings in 2016, we can collectively be satisfied that we have come a long way.
We managed to agree with the Member States and the European Parliament on a great number of landmark decisions, to tighten security laws across the EU and cut terrorists off from the money, firearms and substances they use to carry out attacks.
New laws on combatting terrorism now ensure that terrorism-related offences — such as travelling abroad to commit a terrorist offence, returning or travelling within the EU for such activities, training or financing terrorism — are now criminalised and heavily sanctioned across Europe.
We have reinforced the control of legally-held firearms in the EU.
New rules make it harder to legally acquire high capacity weapons and legislation we just agreed on will further restrict access to chemical substances that could be used to make home-made explosives.
In the Security Union, the sharing of all terrorism-related information quickly and effectively across the EU is priority number one.
Closing information gaps and allowing EU information systems to work together, to ensure that border guards and police officers have the information they need, when they need it – was put at the top of our list.
Thanks to our sustained political efforts, information exchange has increased significantly and Member States share alerts in our databases, such as the Schengen Information System, much more frequently.
Most importantly, in February, we agreed with the co-legislators on our proposal to make all EU Information Systems for borders, migration and security INTEROPERABLE.
This interoperability will be a game changer, because it will eliminate blind spots and prevent people travelling with multiple or fake identity cards across our borders.
Border security is another major pillar in all our actions to protect our citizens across the Union.
In an area of free movement without internal borders, managing Europe’s external borders is a shared responsibility.
We need to know who is crossing our borders.
Since October 2016, the new European Border and Coast Guard Agency we proposed is assisting Member States in this task.
Last September, we proposed to FURTHER reinforce the Agency with a standing corps of 10,000 operational staff and their own equipment.
Moreover, no traveller will pass EU borders unnoticed as all nationals – both EU and non-EU – are now systematically checked against all relevant security databases.
Cutting off the sources of terrorist financing, countering money-laundering, and curbing document fraud are also KEY angles in the fight against terrorism.
We acted on all of these fronts – criminalising money laundering horizontally and tightening preventive rules on laundering and illicit cash flows, and most recently agreeing just last week to introduce stronger security features for national ID cards, including biometric images and fingerprints to counter identity fraud.
Our work for the Security Union however does not stop here, and we know very well that much more remains to be done.
Countering the radicalisation of our own citizens is an EXISTENTIAL priority.
And here I am not talking ONLY about the jihadi radicalisation we saw in Brussels, Paris, Barcelona, Berlin and elsewhere. That is obviously a fundamental issue.
The attack in New Zealand shows however that radicalisation, regardless of the driving ideology behind it, is a threat to our societies that needs to be confronted head-on.
The lone-wolf that builds up an arsenal and uses it against fellow citizens is the hardest threat to defend ourselves against, and is not a challenge we can address from one day to the next.
Extremism from the far-right, or the far-left, has the same outcome.
Innocent citizens, dead.
We need concerted, joint and global action, which focuses on prevention and addresses the root causes of radicalisation as well as its key drivers.
The internet here is the most important battleground.
That is where people get radicalised to terrorism overnight.
That is where they get instructions on how to attack.
And that is where they glorify their attacks to recruit others.
This is something we foresaw already back in 2015, when I established the EU Internet Forum.
Through it, we developed cooperation with major online companies such as Facebook, Twitter, Google and Microsoft, but also many smaller players, to take down terrorist content.
The results of this cooperation were positive and much was achieved.
But the URGENCY of the challenge posed by terrorist content online made it IMPERATIVE that the companies did more, and faster.
We have all seen how quickly the live stream of the Christchurch attacker spread.
Facebook said that it removed 1.5 million copies of it in 24 hours.
But if the video was still available on Facebook 24 hours later, we have a serious problem.
The greatest damage is done in the first minutes, the first hours.
We proposed legislation with the golden hour rule, and companies will have to remove terrorist content within ONE HOUR from the minute they receive a removal order from an EU authority.
If they are at particular risk – such as Facebook – they are to take proactive measures to prevent even the upload of such materials before people see them, and to prevent new copies from re-appearing.
This legislation is now on the table of the EU co-legislators, and we are pushing, for all the obvious reasons, to have it adopted before the EU elections.
Our work does not stop of course at the internet.
Radicalisation in our prisons is also a major challenge, and we cannot allow our penal system to become a hotbed for radicalisation.
We know for example that the attacker in the Kosher store in Paris and one of the attackers on Charlie Hebdo, were radicalised in French prisons.
This is an area that I know Belgium is very proactive in, particularly in terms of detecting the early signs of radicalisation.
The issue of radicalisation is also central as regards foreign terrorist fighters and their families.
Those that are still in Syria, either detained or still at large, those that may want to openly return, and those that may seek to return undetected.
First, it is clear that the fate of foreign fighters and their families is an issue of national competence.
Our Member States will decide what happens to them. But putting all the cases together, there is a clear and undeniable EU dimension.
Starting from our border security, and how we can detect their travel movements.
Here the interoperability of our information systems and the systematic checks on everybody crossing our borders will be critical.
Information exchange, with international partners such as the US feeding information to our databases and our agencies, is also a capital issue and we are actively pushing for this information exchange at every available occasion.
This, for example, will be a key item on the agenda of the G7 Security Ministerial meeting that I will attend in two weeks in Paris.
We are also working closely with third countries in our neighbourhood to build their capacity on information exchange in the context of returning foreign fighters and to strengthen border their controls.
A particular challenge of course is the handling of women and children related to foreign terrorist fighters. Here too, we are providing practical advice to practitioners to address different scenarios, including on psychological support, rehabilitation and reintegration.
Ladies and Gentlemen, Excellencies,
We have faced dreadful experiences with the attacks of the last few years. And we have learnt hard lessons.
Europe has had to learn to overcome the security taboos of the past and realise that we can only defeat terrorism together.
Terrorism is an attack on our democracies and this is something we should never overlook or ignore.
The European Union was founded by visionary leaders who were determined to create a union of peace, stability and democracy.
We should not take for granted the struggles of these visionaries which allow us to live in today’s peaceful world.
On the contrary, we should remind ourselves every day of their achievements as well as the importance of our strong European values and feel privileged and proud that we are part of this Union.
A Union that for 60 years now empowers free citizens to decide their own fates – freely, in peace, stability and prosperity.
This is what our citizens will be called to do in the European elections in May.
The work we do to build a Europe that protects our citizens, is the European Union at its best.
Let us all go out there and communicate this added value far and beyond Brussels to all corners of the Union.