"Surprise, surprise, surprise!"
Posted on 03/10/2005 11:38:10 AM PST by Ooh-Ah
STRASBOURG, France, March 10 (Reuters) - The president of the European Parliament accused European Union governments on Thursday of failing to live up to their promises of joint action against terrorism after last year's Madrid bombings.
Josep Borrell, a Spanish socialist, told a solemn ceremony in the EU legislature commemorating the first anniversary of the bomb blasts aboard commuter trains that killed 191 people that the EU had not fully implemented steps agreed at the time.
"Perhaps we need to recognise that not all the things we agreed to do in the emotion of the moment have in fact been done. Some measures in the action plan adopted after March 11 have still not been applied," he said.
Borrell said EU leaders owed it to the victims of the Madrid attacks, blamed on suspected Islamic militants, to remove the barriers to better European cooperation.
"When are we going to have a European public prosecutor? When are we going to have European legislation preventing money laundering? When are we going to see the connections between that subject and terrorism?" he asked.
There was understandable indignation that "some of the things that we decided to decide ... have still not been done", he said.
Italy has still not implemented a European arrest warrant agreed after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks on the United States, to fast-track extraditions of serious crime suspects between EU member states.
Britain and other common law countries continue to oppose the creation of a European public prosecutor post because it runs counter to their legal traditions.
EU finance ministers have approved tougher controls on people bringing large cash sums into or out of the Union, and on cash payments of more than 15,000 euros ($20,170) at places such as money-changers, but a new draft Council of Europe treaty on terrorist financing is yet to be ratified.
The EU assembly observed a minute's silence in memory of the Madrid victims a day early because it will not be sitting on Friday.
Now that is good!
Europe Awakening?
EU assembly brands Lebanon's Hezbollah 'terrorist'
You traded real allies for nothing, morons.
Europe won't get it until they have their own 9/11.
Broken link. If true, does this mean France also recognizes Hezbollah as a terrorist group? That would be like the sky turning yellow and the sun turning blue.
tracking transactions of 20K in cash, while 10K is the number in America. the EU is too stupid to live.
not really, The EU wants to have every countries terror agency and the like report to them, which they have no interest too. The EU terror group is basically a guy with a title and no power.
I doubt this man's admonitions will have any real effect on the Euros.
EU assembly brands Lebanon's Hezbollah 'terrorist' http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1360159/posts
"Surprise, surprise, surprise!"
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