King played down tensions with his Greek counterpart Dimitris Avramopoulos | John Thys/AFP via Getty Images
Commission targets radicalization online and in jails
Commission sees the web as the main ‘battleground’ in the fight against terrorism.
Two days after the deadly attack in Orlando and hours after a French police officer and his wife were killed, the European Commission unveiled measures Tuesday designed to help EU members tackle extremism and radicalization.
Such events “remind us that terrorism is global and yet extremely local as the majority of perpetrators are citizens born and raised on our territories,” said Dimitris Avramopoulos, European commissioner for migration, home affairs and citizenship.
In Orlando, 49 people were killed when a gunman opened fire in a gay nightclub. Authorities say Omar Mateen pledged allegiance to ISIL shortly before the attack, and the FBI’s director said the gunman was radicalized through the internet. Late Monday, a man claiming allegiance to ISIL killed a French police officer and his partner in Magnanville, west of Paris.
The Commission’s package of measures focuses mainly on education, employment and helping those already in prison, and has a strong focus on online activities. Avramopoulos said the web was “the most important battleground to counter radicalization.”
The aim is to work “with the IT industry to stop the spread of illegal content inciting violence, support the development of positive alternative narratives by civil society, and develop media literacy so that young people assess information critically,” the Commission said in a news release.
At an online forum held in Brussels in December, Commission officials and tech executives agreed suspicious content would be referred to Europol, the EU’s law enforcement agency, after which it could be deleted by the companies. Avramopoulos said the idea was to create a database of deleted terrorist content.
Describing jails as fertile grounds for radicalization, the Commission said the new package would “develop guidelines on mechanisms and programs to prevent and counter radicalization in prison and help rehabilitation and reintegration.”