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but it has also encouraged a sense of complacency. As a result, terrorism has topped
the European agenda only in the wake of dramatic attacks. Very soon afterwards, it
was back to business as usual, with many of the agreed measures getting stuck in
the bureaucratic fog of ministerial meetings, roundtables and committee hearings.
Edwin E. Bakker observes only terrorist attacks are able to force Europeans to
overcome their difference and move EU anti-terrorism policy into higher gear
& The speed and direction of our anti-terrorism efforts seems to depend on the
terrorists rather than our politicians. 22 Another albeit related facet of the EU s
approach at fighting terrorism is the notion of terrorism as a symptom, which can
only be resolved by removing its political and economic root causes. Rather than
fighting terrorism per se, European statements about terrorism always highlight
the need to look at its underlying factors, as well as the grievances and drivers
that compel people to join terrorist groups. Given the European experience with
The European Union, Russia, and the fight against terrorism 117
terrorism, there is also a tendency to view terrorism as geographically confined and
rooted in particular regional conflicts.23 This may be laudable, yet in combination
with the comparatively low priority accorded to the issue generally it means that
the development of any meaningful cooperation between Russia and the EU in the
area of counter-terrorism has been all but impossible.
It is not an exaggeration to say that the entire Russia EU relationship has been
overshadowed by controversies about the Russian policy towards Chechnya. While
Russia has defended the application of harsh security measures against the province
as part of the global campaign against Islamist terrorism and criticized European
governments for giving asylum to rebel leaders,24 European lawmakers and officials
have described Moscow s actions as one of the primary causes for the persistence
of the conflict. Numerous statements by the European Parliament and to a lesser
extent the European Commission have called on Russia to improve the political
and human rights situation in Chechnya, implying sometimes rather openly that
this was a pre-condition for achieving a more effective relationship with the EU. A
report of the European Parliament s Committee on Foreign Affairs stated:
An effective partnership in combating terrorism & presupposes a reasonable
degree of common understanding of the definition and causes of terrorism.
The key to fight terrorism in Russia is to resolve the conflict in Chechnya.
Unquestionably, Chechen armed groups commit atrocities & But federal and
local government armed forces continue to commit grave breaches of human
rights and international humanitarian laws.25
An earlier resolution, adopted by the European Parliament as a whole, went even
further, declaring that the ongoing conflict in Chechnya and the massive human
rights violation taking place there are an insurmountable [sic] obstacle to the
development of a genuine partnership between the EU and Russia. 26 Indeed, this
was echoed by the EU s then External Relations Commissioner, Chris Patten, who
when referring to Chechnya pointed out that the fact that you are trying to sort
out problems with another country should not ever in my view stop you raising
questions which that country may find difficult or sensitive. 27
Again, the European Union s principled stance on the thorny issue of Chechnya
may be praiseworthy. It is undoubtedly true that Moscow s heavy-handed approach
towards the province has made the conflict worse. The use of heavy artillery
against civilian targets as well as the de facto suspension of political rights has
helped radicalize the Chechen population, blurring the public s distinction between
perpetrator and victim and providing the rebels with a seemingly never-ending
stream of recruits. At the same time, as even the most fervent supporters of the EU
would admit, the EU s public shaming of Moscow s Chechnya policy has never
been likely to achieve any shift in Russian policy. Public condemnation aside, the
EU has never employed any other means of exerting pressure in this respect, nor
would the member states have allowed it to do so. In relation to, say, Romania or
Turkey, voicing public concern about the functioning of the judicial system or the
treatment of minorities may indeed have been effective as a way of bringing about
118 P.R. Neumann
political change. In contrast to both Romania and Turkey, however, Russia is not
an EU accession country, and the carrot of EU membership could therefore not
be part of the bilateral equation. As a consequence, the EU s stance on Chechnya
has amounted to little more than an exercise at public grandstanding, aimed at the
European public s liberal conscience rather than hoping to effecting any significant
change of behaviour. The most unfortunate consequence of this has been to make
the development of any form of meaningful relationship with Russia on counter-
terrorism issues impossible.
The second reason for the EU s failure to extend its anti-terrorism cooperation
with Russia relates to the nature of the EU as an international organisation. The
EU is not a national government. It cannot arrest or prosecute terrorists, nor can
it deploy intelligence officers or satellites in order to track them. Most counter-
terrorism work is done by policemen and national intelligence agencies. Even
during cross-border investigations, security agencies tend to favour bilateral
rather than multilateral interactions. After all, secret intelligence information is
considered by most governments a national asset, which was obtained at great
expense and will be shared only if tangible benefits can be gained through such
cooperation.28 In practical terms, therefore, it will be hard to convince governments
that there is need or justification for Estonia or Malta to be involved when France
and Spain carry out a joint operation aimed at uncovering an ETA cell.
The EU s difficulties in this area are compounded by the fact that counter-
terrorism is not in itself a clearly defined area of policymaking. At the national
level, it involves a long list of departments and government agencies, including
law enforcement and intelligence, immigration and border control, foreign and
defence, finance, as well as even health. In federally structured political systems
(for example, Germany or Belgium), the bureaucratic nightmare of coordinating
counter-terrorism policy across government departments extends to the vertical
level, with core competencies in the fight against terrorism, such as law enforcement
and intelligence collection, residing with local or state authorities rather than
national government.29 As a consequence, trying to coordinate the collective efforts
of twenty-five governments at the EU level is considered neither feasible nor even
desirable by many observers.30
The underlying political reason for this institutional problem, however, is not
merely technical. In political terms, EU member states have proved unwilling to
give the Union the responsibilities and resources it would need to be truly effective.
Counter-terrorism goes to the core of national sovereignty, and governments are
perhaps understandably reluctant to give the EU powers that would dilute, or
interfere with, the authority to protect their nations from physical attack. This, of
course, is true not only in the area of counter-terrorism. While EU cooperation
on issues like agriculture, trade and even monetary policy has exceeded that of
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