Terrorism may be defined as the employment of methods of coercive intimidation against non-combatants to further the views of an individual or group. The issue of combating terrorism has been given a particularly high priority in Western Europe since the attacks by the al-Qa’ida terrorist network on the USA on 11 September 2001, and the bombings in Madrid, Spain, on 11 March 2004, responsibility for which was attributed to that network or organizations linked to it.
Until 2001 there had been little progress in developing common strategies for combating terrorism. At international level several United Nations conventions had been adopted to deal with the issue of terrorism, and in 1977 the Council of Europe had adopted the Convention on the Suppression of Terrorism, which included a list of terrorist acts. Neither organization had a common or comprehensive definition of terrorism. Similarly, in the European Union (EU) no common strategy had been developed before 2001 despite the fact that the legal base for this had been provided for by the Treaty on European Union of 1992. Rather, there existed a varied set of definitions of terrorism and at that time six of the 15 EU member states had specific anti-terrorist legislation (France, Germany, Italy, Portugal, Spain and the United Kingdom).
Terrorism in Western Europe in the post-Second World War era had been a phenomenon that arose from predominantly national level territorial conflicts. For example, the Basque terrorist group Euskadi ta Askatasuna (ETA—Basque Homeland and Liberty), which seeks the independence of the Basque Country from Spain, has murdered members of the Spanish élite. The Irish Republican Army (IRA), which opposes British rule in Northern Ireland, has carried out a number of bombing campaigns in Northern Ireland and Great Britain. In the 1970s left-wing or ‘anti-imperialist’ terrorism undertaken by the Rote Armee Fraktion (RAF—Red Army Faction) included the kidnapping of leading business figures.
Following the terrorist attacks on the USA on 11 September 2001 the EU developed a Framework Decision on Combating Terrorism. The Justice and Home Affairs ministers of the Council of the European Union and the European Council met on 20 and 21 September 2001 respectively to discuss a common EU strategy. The Framework Decision of 13 June 2002 aims for a common definition of terrorist offences and a uniform legal framework for prosecuting terrorist acts. The EU has developed an agreement on a European-wide arrest warrant, the intensification of co-operation and exchange of information between intelligence services, and measures to combat the funding of terrorist activities.
The EU Framework Decision provides a definition of terrorist groups and terrorist offences to which member states’ measures should be approximated. Terrorist offences are defined as those which have the aim of ‘(a) seriously intimidating a population or; (b) unduly compelling a Government or international organisation to perform or abstain from performing an act; (c) or seriously destabilising or destroying the fundamental political, constitutional, economic or social structures of a country or an international organisation’. Specific terrorist offences are: ‘(a) attacks upon a person’s life which may cause death; (b) attacks on the physical integrity of a person; (c) kidnapping or hostage taking; (d) causing extensive destruction to a Government or public facility, a transport system, an infrastructure facility, including an information system, a fixed platform located on the continental shelf, a public place or private property likely to endanger human life or result in major economic loss; (e) seizure of aircrafts, ships or other means of public goods transport; (f) manufacture, possession, acquisition, transport, supply or use of weapons, explosives or of nuclear, biological or chemical weapons, as well as research into, and development of biological and chemical weapons; (g) release of dangerous substances, or causing fires, explosions or floods the effect of which is to endanger human life; (h) interfering with or disrupting the supply of water, power or any other fundamental natural resource the effect of which is to endanger human life; (i) threatening to commit any of the acts listed in (a) to (h)’.
This is the complete article, containing 660 words
(approx. 2 pages at 300 words per page).
