Excellencies,
Ladies and Gentlemen,
Let me start by expressing our thanks to our co-chairs for hosting this very important event. Since the creation of this forum on 2011 a lot of events and occurrences reminded us how important is this cooperation.
Let me start also by telling you that I took note of what the Secretary General Guterres said yesterday at the General Assembly. Our world is suffering from a bad case of “Trust Deficit Disorder”.
I can witness it, as Commissioner responsible for Migration and Home Affairs during the last four years. We must all understand that we are all on the same side confronted with same threats, same challenges and same responsibilities.
Lack of trust is weakening States, institutions and the rule-based global order we built after two catastrophic world wars.
This is exactly the message I have been repeating to the Member States of the European Union for the past four years.
History is our greatest teacher and we must not allow history to be repeated. We cannot fight and defeat terrorism without the trust to work together as one against a threat which affects all of us equally and indiscriminately.
The steps we have taken in the European Union to build a genuine and effective Security Union – and the great progress we have made during the last four years, unfortunately pushed by all these tragic events that have happened in the meantime – exemplify this trust-building.
I remain convinced that this Forum can and must play this trust-building role at the global level.
We Europeans do not only believe in the power of multilateralism: we champion multilateralism.
We believe in the power of the United Nations to become more relevant and more effective in ensuring peace, stability and security.
For this reason, we fully support closer cooperation between the UN and this Forum, at a time when the UN Secretary General devotes greater resources to counter-terrorism with the appointment of an experienced diplomat and military the Under-Secretary General Voronkov. I would like to praise Mr Voronkov for what he has done during the last year.
I would therefore like to thank Morocco and the Netherlands for their leadership in this Forum.
And I welcome, the new strands of work that we endorse today : – on administrative cooperation, -on detecting and interdicting terrorist travel, – on countering drones and of course on terrorism online.
This is essential when the terrorist threat remains high in many parts of the world.
Many of the Foreign Terrorist Fighters of Daesh are at large, and need to be brought to justice.
The threat of home-grown extremism remains ever-present.
In Europe, we have understood that this is the toughest battle to win: the battle for ideas.
Prevention must be at the centre of our actions.
That is why we are investing heavily to address radicalisation both offline and online.
The internet is the most critical battleground. Two years ago, we took the initiative to set up the EU Internet Forum and now it has been upgraded to a Global Internet Forum. Because as I said Daesh is defeated on the ground but not yet on the internet.
Just two weeks ago, we presented legislation to tackle terrorist content online.
All internet platforms affected by the problem are to take action to remove terrorist content.
Outside our borders, we have more than doubled our funding for capacity building projects on security in partner countries – from 400m€ in 2016 to 900m€ in 2017.
We hold yearly Counterterrorism Dialogues with key countries in our proximity, as well as regional organisations, to fight terrorism in line with global standards set by the UN and this Forum.
We have all been hit by terrorist attacks and we are all together in this, beyond faith, culture and ethnicity.
History tells us that terrorism can be defeated – but this requires collective mobilisation.
In Europe, we are keen students of history. For this reason, we will continue to support wholeheartedly both this Forum and the work against terrorism within the UN system.
Thank you for your attention.