Verbatim report of proceedings

Wednesday, 15 March 2017 - Strasbourg

Topical debate - EU security agenda: one year after the Brussels attacks (debate)

  Jan Philipp Albrecht (Verts/ALE). – Mr President, a year after the Brussels attacks it is the right moment to discuss the EU’s security agenda. It is time to step back for a moment, to just pause and think through the implications of our actions until now. Are we taking the right measures to invest massively in better equipment, better cooperation between our police and security services, and effective deradicalisation, or are we still putting forward expensive, but ineffective and symbolic, measures of mass data collection or intrusive surveillance measures against completely innocent citizens, thereby weakening effective security and our freedoms together which we defend? Therefore, I am very happy that Commissioner King is starting to investigate the effectiveness of the hundreds of security measures which the European Union and its Member States have adopted through the years. We have to see what is working and what is not working.