Europe's open borders make life easy for tourists, traders -- and, unfortunately, terrorists.
The arrest of 16 terrorist suspects in Europe, coordinated across borders on Tuesday, shows that robust efforts by the police can mitigate the threat on the Continent. If only EU leaders themselves could act as robustly.
On the day of the arrests, EU officials faulted member states for slow progress in implementing counterterrorism measures. Italy, Germany and Greece have failed to implement the European arrest warrant on time. Greece, again, along with five other EU countries, missed a deadline for creating joint investigative teams. It's particularly bad timing for Athens, which desperately needs to make athletes and spectators feel secure at the Olympics.
More bureaucracy and special summits aren't the answer. But if meetings raise the heat on EU members, we won't complain. The European arrest warrant, while far from perfect, was among the sensible measures adopted by the EU in the months after 9/11. The EU then also agreed on a common definition of terrorism and ordered its members to criminalize it. Before 9/11, only six of the then 15 members had such laws.
These measures are still not fully implemented. Tragically, it took the Madrid bombings to shake Europe out of its complacency. Home to far more Muslims -- 12 million -- and closer to the Middle East than the U.S., the EU should feel as vulnerable as America, if not more so.
This message isn't sinking in fast enough. Otto Schily, the German interior minister, fights steady resistance from the coalition partners, the Greens, against his tougher antiterror plans. Germany's security services are also hampered by the country's federal structure, which leads to much duplication without effective coordination -- and lets terrorists slip through the cracks, as Mohamed Atta and his Hamburg cell partners comfortably did.
Belgium, Italy and Greece were traditionally lackadaisical in their approach. Belgium's leaders are wary of antagonizing their Muslim population. That's a bizarre concern: Terrorists not only kill Muslims but their perversity makes it even harder for peaceful Muslims to build a future in Europe. Greece and Italy, which both have suffered from homegrown terror in the last three decades, are hampered by, shall we say, administrative inefficiencies.
Ironically, some EU states had tougher antiterror laws on the books than the U.S. before 9/11. Internet providers in France, Italy and the U.K. had to retain past data, unlike in the U.S. In the 1990s, France played hard ball with Algerian terrorists who detonated a few bombs in the Paris subway. It should be a model of counterterrorism policy. The French cooperate as closely with U.S. police as any EU country -- that is, when they're not too busy tilting at American windmills over Iraq.
This week's bureaucratic tussles over a new boss for Europol and a security center in Brussels seem beside the point. Action on the ground counts for more. France, Germany, Italy and Britain have in recent weeks moved to expel extremist imams who inspire and nurture terror, which strikes at the roots of the problem.
The bloc needs to score more successes like Tuesday's dramatic arrests. Rabei Osman Sayed Ahmed, a 32-year-old Egyptian weapons expert, was picked up in Milan. Spanish police consider him a "key figure" in the March 11 bombings. Phone taps indicate that he was plotting an imminent attack in Italy. He's now in jail. That's a good start but there's a lot further to go.
