European Commission praises EU-US cooperation on counter-terrorism efforts

  20 January 2017    Read: 1140
European Commission praises EU-US cooperation on counter-terrorism efforts
The European Commission has published reports praising the increased cooperation between the United States and the European Union on two key agreements on preventing and combating terrorism, the EU-US Terrorist Finance Tracking Programme (TFTP) Agreement and the EU-US Passenger Name Records (PNR) Agreement.
The report on the TFTP found that the agreement had been utilized in terrorist attack investigations in the European Union, including the January 2015 Charlie Hebdo attack and the November 2015 Paris attacks. Under its provisions, progress has also been made in uncovering EU-based recruiting and financing of terrorist fighters.
According to the report, the use of the system has increased, generating 8,998 investigative leads, compared to 3,929 in the previous reporting period.

"The Commission welcomes the increased transparency of the US authorities regarding the functioning and added value of the TFTP and highlights the importance of the Agreement as an instrument to provide timely, accurate and reliable information to help identify and track terrorists and their support networks around the world," the commission said in a Thursday release.

The Commission also said that US authorities had been successfully implementing the PNR Agreement, which was launched following the 9/11 terrorist attacks. The report stated that the United States has met the agreed upon conditions to provide data, and highlighted efforts made to promote the sharing of PNR information with Member States, Europol and Eurojust.
However, it stressed that US authorities should monitor the number of staff with access rights to PNR data and regularly update and remove data which is no longer required.

This joint review of the TFTP Agreement covers the period between March 2014 and December 2015, while the EU-US PNR Agreement review covers the period from July 2013 to May 2015.

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