Assembly chief raps EU states on terror fight
Reuters  | 10 Mar 2005
 

STRASBOURG, France, March 10 (Reuters) - The president of the European Parliament accused European Union governments on Thursday of failing to live up to their promises of joint action against terrorism after last year's Madrid bombings.

Josep Borrell, a Spanish socialist, told a solemn ceremony in the EU legislature commemorating the first anniversary of the bomb blasts aboard commuter trains that killed 191 people that the EU had not fully implemented steps agreed at the time.

"Perhaps we need to recognise that not all the things we agreed to do in the emotion of the moment have in fact been done. Some measures in the action plan adopted after March 11 have still not been applied," he said.

Borrell said EU leaders owed it to the victims of the Madrid attacks, blamed on suspected Islamic militants, to remove the barriers to better European cooperation.

"When are we going to have a European public prosecutor? When are we going to have European legislation preventing money laundering? When are we going to see the connections between that subject and terrorism?" he asked.

There was understandable indignation that "some of the things that we decided to decide ... have still not been done", he said.

Italy has still not implemented a European arrest warrant agreed after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks on the United States, to fast-track extraditions of serious crime suspects between EU member states.

Britain and other common law countries continue to oppose the creation of a European public prosecutor post because it runs counter to their legal traditions.

EU finance ministers have approved tougher controls on people bringing large cash sums into or out of the Union, and on cash payments of more than 15,000 euros ($20,170) at places such as money-changers, but a new draft Council of Europe treaty on terrorist financing is yet to be ratified.

The EU assembly observed a minute's silence in memory of the Madrid victims a day early because it will not be sitting on Friday.