Poor intelligence sharing across the EU led to more deaths at the hands of violent jihadists, Europe’s top cop claims
Europol boss Rob Wainwright urged security services and police forces to share more intelligence in order to combat the terror threat across the continent
POOR intelligence sharing across the EU led to more deaths from jihadi attacks , Europe’s top cop admitted last night.
In plea to open up intelligence databases to fight terror across the continent, the head of Europol Rob Wainwright said: “If info was shared, lives would have been saved.”
It came as chief EU negotiator Michel Barnier stoked fears by claiming Brexit “will have very practical consequences” for British security.
Writing in the French newspaper Le Monde, Michel Barnier said Brexit meant: “The British defence minister will no longer be able to sit at the council of defence ministers, London will leave the European Defence Agency and Europol” - the EU wide police force.
The coded warning came despite EU chiefs angrily lashing out at Theresa May last March when she also hinted that security could be a key negotiating chip for Britain.
She wrote: “In security terms, a failure to reach agreement would mean our cooperation in the fight against crime and terrorism would be weakened.”
But Mr Barnier said yesterday: “the union of 27 and the United Kingdom will have to join forces to deal with common threats: the safety of our fellow citizens is not being marketed.
“We will therefore examine in due course the conditions for convergence between the union of 27 and the United Kingdom on security and defence matters.”
Just hours later, Brit Rob Wainwright who heads up the EU’s crime fighting agency Europol said all countries “need to go further” in intelligence sharing after a string of terror attacks across France, Belgium, Britain, Sweden and Finland.
He said the security services and police were “dealing with a very diffuse community of thousands of radicalised individuals out of which anyone can become a potential terrorist at short notice.”
And he added that while police are doing a better job than two years ago of sharing data but added that “we need to go further.”
“Not always is anything known about them in the police records. We have to therefore maximise the precious information that we have from all possible sources.”
He demanded intelligence agencies and police forces communicate more efficiently as “we know that many of the attackers have a criminal background.
“Let’s open up the databases to cross check the information.