UK expected to support plans on greater EU information sharing
The UK is expected to back EU plans to widen information sharing related to counter-terrorism issues. The terrorist attacks in Brussels (Belgium) in March and Paris (France) in November 2015 exposed serious shortcomings in this area, prompting action. Among the plans is a single search interface for terrorist suspects, which will be made available to police and border guards via national and European databases. Britain’s home secretary, Theresa May, is expected to join her counterparts in signing this into law on 10 June. There are also hopes to make it easier for security forces to match biometric data across different country’s databases. 

Theresa May, the home secretary, is expected to throw her weight behind an EU counter-terrorism plan to extend information sharing, after the attacks in Brussels and Paris exposed deadly shortcomings.

In future, police and border guards across the EU may be able to make a single search for terrorist suspects across national and European databases.

Ministers will also discuss how to bridge the information gap between the 26 countries within Europe’s passport-free zone and those countries outside it, such as the UK and Ireland.

A single-search interface is one of the top priorities in the plan to improve information sharing, which EU home affairs ministers are expected to sign off this Friday.

The plan, a “roadmap to enhance information exchange and information management”, was drawn up after an emergency ministerial meeting in March, two days after the Brussels attacks, which killed 35 people and injured more than 300.



May, who wants Britain to stay in the EU, is expected to endorse the plan when she meets her 27 counterparts in Luxembourg on Friday.

In March, EU ministers pledged as a matter of urgency to ensure the “consistent use and interoperability of European and international databases”. On Friday they are being asked to sign up to practical steps to achieve that goal. As well as a single-search function there are plans to make it easier to match biometric data, such as fingerprints, across different systems.



While many European countries, although not the UK, have agreed to share currency and abolish border controls, efforts to open up intelligence and police data have been more hesitant. Different rules exist in various EU member states about what information can be shared across borders, and intelligence services have deep suspicions over sharing secrets too widely; traditionally spy chiefs have preferred bilateral exchanges with trusted countries rather than giving information to EU-wide systems.

The Netherlands, which holds the presidency of the EU council until late June, has identified problems. In some cases there is “limited availability of information” on terrorist travellers, as well as a “sub-optimal sharing of information based on an overly strict application of the need-to-know principle”, according to a draft of the information plan obtained by the Guardian.

Britain’s home secretary, Theresa May, with the Belgian interior minister, Jan Jambon, during a meeting of EU justice and security ministers in March. Photograph: Eric Lalmand/AFP/Getty Images

The EU hopes to close these gaps, after intelligence failings emerged following the Brussels and Paris attacks. In one of the most glaring examples, Belgian authorities failed to act on information from Turkey noting that one of its nationals, Ibrahim el-Bakraoui, had attempted to join Islamic State forces in Syria. On 22 March, Bakraoui blew himself up at Brussels’ Zaventem airport, in part of the most deadly attack on the Belgian capital since the second world war.

In another case, France failed to pass on information about Mehdi Nemmouche, a French-Algerian dual citizen, who murdered four people by gunfire at the Jewish Museum in Brussels in 2014. According to the former French spy Claude Moniquet, France knew Nemmouche had returned to Europe from Syria, following a tipoff from German intelligence. But French authorities did not share this information widely. Two months after his return from the Syrian battlefields, Nemmouche launched the murderous attack in Brussels.



Ard van der Steur, the Dutch security minister, who will chair Friday’s meeting, will call on ministers to make a “political commitment to share all relevant information unless there are legal or operational reasons not to do so”.



European officials say countries have become more willing to share information since the Paris attacks. Rob Wainwright, the head of Europol, said national authorities were showing greater willingness to work with his agency. “I still think we are missing a part of the intelligence picture,” he said. But some countries had been through “a sea change in their sharing of intelligence with us since Paris and Brussels”, he added. He said: “The position of the UK is improving.”

Under May, the UK has been pushing for more EU data sharing. In 2015 the British government gained access to the Schengen information system, a vast database used by police in 29 countries covering missing people, stolen property and people linked to crime. But the UK does not have complete access to the system and the government hopes Friday’s plan will lead to information sharing between the UK and Schengen countries concerning visa data (notably third-country nationals denied entry to Europe).

But Moniquet, who now leads the European Strategic Intelligence and Security Centre in Brussels, suggested it was “wishful thinking” that EU intelligence sharing would become routine. “Several European countries are not really willing to put information in the Schengen database,” he said.



Also, countries did not put their most valuable intelligence into common EU systems, he said. “It will always be on the lowest common denominator because you have to balance between countries, such as France and Britain, who are really engaged on terrorism, and the Baltics, who are more concerned about the Russians.”

The plan to be agreed on Friday contains a number of technical measures aimed at improving interoperability between European and international data systems.

As well as the Schengen information system, ministers are looking at three separate databases covering asylum seekers, criminals and non-EU nationals who have applied for visas in the EU’s passport-free zone. EU officials want to improve technical links between these data systems, which were built at different times, for different reasons, under varying data protection standards.

Some changes to EU law will be required, but some technical changes, such as a common system for matching fingerprints, could be done under existing rules.