by Anahid Najafizadeh
This paper will describe and analyze the goals of the ‘Pursue’ commitment under the European Union (EU) Counter-Terrorism Strategy, which employs the governance of the European Commission, European Parliament, and the Council of the EU to prevent terrorism for European community safety. Given the rise of attacks in Europe, this investigation will reveal insight on the EU’s compliance to security commitments. As one of the commitments in the Strategy, Pursue aims to impede terrorist activity, with goals including pursuing terrorists, coordinating police and judicial efforts, implementing legislation among Member States, impeding the access to weapons and financing for terrorists, and helping national counterterrorism projects. To analyze whether the EU met, fully or partially, the Pursue goals of the Strategy, this paper will investigate the actions of the EU and its governing institutions following the recent wave of attacks in Europe, starting in 2015 in Paris to 2017 in Barcelona. This paper argues that given the series of events that occurred preceding and following the 2015 to 2017 terror attacks, Member States failed to share information, use important data systems, and decrease the access to weapons, which then aided terrorist activity and movement across borders. However, while there were failures, the Pursue commitment should not be abandoned, as many successes in fighting terrorism can be attributed to it and the Strategy as a whole. A set of important questions arise from this paper regarding the foundations of such an effort to combat terrorism, which can be the focus of further research. These include normative questions, such as whether the EU ought to have a counter-terrorism mandate, given its supranational nature, as well as questions regarding the extent to which such a mandate would require the EU to supplement national efforts without blurring lines of sovereignty.
