EU leaders debate new anti-terror measures

Galvanised by the recent terror attacks in France, European Union leaders today debated a range of ambitious steps to better protect their 28 nations, including exchanging airliner passenger manifests, tightening controls at the border and combating extremism on the Internet.
EU President Donald Tusk, the summit meeting's host, said he would seek agreement on a "work plan to step up the fight against terrorism." The bloc's top official for counter-terrorism warned member governments last month that "Europe is facing an unprecedented, diverse and serious threat."
Counter-terrorism policy shot to the top of the EU agenda following the Jan. 7-9 terror attacks in Paris against a satirical weekly, a policewoman and a kosher grocery store that claimed a total of 17 victims.

The three gunmen, who proclaimed allegiance to Al-Qaida in Yemen and the Islamic State group, were also shot dead by French police.
The attacks mobilized France and other EU countries to seek more effective ways to deal with armed Islamic militancy, especially the problem of radicalized European-born Muslims who go to fight in Syria or Iraq and then return home.
The attacks in the French capital "were a game-changer" for EU counter-terrorism policy, said Alexandra de Hoop Scheffer, senior trans-Atlantic fellow and director of the Paris office of the German Marshall Fund think tank.

To prepare for Thursday's summit in Brussels, EU foreign, finance and interior and justice ministers drew up recommendations on what to do.

But as the leaders met, some officials urged caution. Finnish Prime Minister Alexander Stubb said it was imperative to strike "a careful balance between civil liberties and security."
European Parliament President Martin Schulz, who addressed the summit, told a news conference afterward that rashly limiting individual rights in the name of boosting public safety would play right into the terrorists' hands by discrediting Western-style democracy.
"We need to be a state of law and democracy," Schulz said. "We need to protect our values.