Michael McDowell's criticism of EU efforts to increase its control in justice, immigration and police co-operation underlines how far the union is from effectively co-ordinating anti-terrorism measures, writes Rory Miller
Rhetoric apart, in the three years following al-Qaeda's September 11th attacks on the US, there were few substantive attempts to address the issue of Europe's counter-terrorism capabilities.
Some EU leaders, deeply suspicious of the Bush administration, were loath to co-operate with the US in its "War on Terror", which they believed to be ill-conceived, simplistic and counter-productive. Others simply refused to grasp the magnitude of the threat that Europe faced.
All that changed, of course, following the March 2004 Madrid and July 2005 London bombings. The nature and scale of these first Islamist attacks on European soil were unprecedented even in an EU that had experienced decades of ETA, IRA, Kurdish and Palestinian violence within its borders.
This new reality, and in particular the shocking realisation that a future attack could include a "weapons of mass destruction" component, led EU ministers to create the post of EU counter-terrorism co-ordinator shortly after the Madrid bombing.
Following the appointment of Gijs de Vries, a former Dutch MEP and deputy interior minister, he repeatedly downplayed his influence and argued that the EU, for both political and operational reasons, had only a limited capacity to influence and control counter-terrorism efforts.
However, the creation of this post was a conscious attempt to centralise a key strand of EU security policy and as such it signalled a turning point in the EU's approach to counter-terrorism.
Apart from this appointment, the EU has put forward increasingly ambitious, large-scale and grand proposals that had little chance of ever coming about - such as a European Central Intelligence Agency - and looked to introduce a raft of new regulations and laws, as well as consolidate existing provisions.
Undoubtedly, there is a vital need for the EU to address seriously the very real challenge we face.
An internal EU report published a week before the Madrid bombings identified three areas of weakness in EU counter-terrorism - a lack of resources and intelligence capabilities; poor co-ordination between officials working on law enforcement and security issues; and the fact that a number of EU member states were making no effort to implement EU agreements.
Moreover, it makes sense to tackle some trans-national security issues - such as border controls - at an EU level.
However, many of the proposals introduced since the Madrid and London bombings appear to infringe on the privacy and fundamental freedoms of Europe's citizens, without providing a satisfactory means of dealing with and defeating terrorists.
Statewatch, for example, has argued that 27 of the 57 counter-terrorism proposals put forward for discussion after the Madrid bombings had no relevance to tackling terror and had to do with increasing EU-wide law enforcement powers and the surveillance of EU citizens.
Most controversial have been attempts to implement EU arrest and evidence warrants in all member states; to adapt the European Automated Fingerprints Identification System (Eurodac), originally established to deal with illegal immigration, for counter-terrorism purposes; and to push through "data retention" regulations intended to force telecoms and internet companies across all 25 EU member states to keep telephone, e-mail traffic and internet access data for up to a year.
There is also the issue of whether EU officials, attached to the justice and home affairs council, have been using the terrorism threat not only to erode civil liberties but to promote the goal of an EU "super-state", capable of encroaching on the legislative and policy-making powers of individual member states.
For example, in 2005, discussions on the controversial anti-terror "data retention" proposals were blocked by the EU Commission and parliament on the grounds that these were issues of business regulation not security, and as such came under the jurisdiction of Brussels rather than national legislatures.
Such actions by EU institutions explain in part the concern of a number of EU justice ministers, including Michael McDowell, over extending EU power in the areas of justice and home affairs, despite the claim by EU Commission President José Manuel Barroso that ending the national veto on justice issues is needed for the EU to fight terrorism effectively.
Previous efforts to integrate the EU's intelligence capacity and to improve arrangements for the sharing of intelligence have been repeatedly blocked by member states.
It now appears that Franco Frattini, EU commissioner for justice and home affairs, is experiencing similar difficulties in convincing the 25 EU governments to agree to the co-ordination of new anti-terrorism technologies and the introduction of EU legislation aimed at combating the use of the internet to promote radicalism.
The inability of member states to co-operate on even these most straightforward of issues makes one question whether it will ever be possible to centralise control of EU counter-terrorism policy, or whether Europe's citizens would be better served if their representatives in Brussels abandoned this goal in the face of seemingly insurmountable ideological and practical obstacles.
Rory Miller is senior lecturer in Mediterranean Studies at King's College, London