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EU: Council of the European Union: Europol Regulation, Counter-terrorism and CT short term actions
22 October 2015
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Preparation of the upcoming trilogues and technical meetings on the draft Europol Regulation (
DS LIMITE doc no: 1532, pdf) 31 pages. Including the Internet Referral Unit at Europol (EU IRU):
"If the EU IRU is expected to actively identify threats from, for example, terrorism propaganda, according to Europol, it is indispensable that a dialogue with the concerned private parties is possible. This would mean that e.g. Facebook is in a position to respond to a referral by Europol, by pointing out that the same IP address or the same person also has other accounts that
Europol has not yet discovered. The same applies to other service providers, which generally have a very good overview of their customers’ activities on their own platform, but possibly and probably also as regards other platforms."
- EU Counter-Terrorism Coordinator:
Follow-up to the statement of the Members of the European Council of 12 February 2015 on counter-terrorism: State of play on implementation of measures (LIMITE doc no: 12318-15, pdf): The explicit interface between counter-terrorism and refugees and migrants:
"the new “Hot spot approach” developed along the Commission proposals, and especially the EU Regional Task Force in Catania allow Frontex and Europol officers to cooperate on the spot and to make the best possible use of screening and debriefing interviews of migrants....
Europol: Member States have increasingly provided information on foreign terrorist fighters to Europol since January 2013. The total number of contributions is now 1069 (620 by the end of February 2015), with 9724 person entities stored in Focal Point (FP) Travellers (3600 in March 2015), out of those 1969 are confirmed fighters/travellers. Interpol has become a significant contributor to FP Travellers with more than 3000 persons reported by September 2015...
The IRU (see story above) has already carried out 500 referrals, over 90 % of which have been successful leading to the removal of the flagged content.... The IRU is also tackling the facilitation of illegal immigration, with a continuous analysis of social media-related information on a 7/7 basis." [emphasis added]
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Fight against terrorism: implementation of short-term actions (LIMITE doc no: 12551-15, pdf)
"The Council considers it necessary and important to consolidate and strengthen the IRU within Europol. Member States are invited to increase contributions for referrals to the EU IRU and to second experts to the EU IRU. The Commission is invited to provide the EU IRU with appropriate resources as soon as possible and to inform COSI thereof in November..."