EU implements huge system to monitor radical groups and individuals

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"This document calls for gathering, storing and using information on 'subversives' by EU and national security agencies. How are these bodies and agencies going to compile and use the information gathered," he asked.

"The aim is to exchange information and increase the amount of information 'obtained by other, non-specific means or instruments'. Does this essentially mean by any means possible?" he said.

He also expressed concern that the instrument seemed to be "strongly biased against non-EU nationals, such as immigrants from Canada, Australia and New Zealand. Could the Commission explain this?" 

The document describing the instrument includes a section titled "Description of ideology supporting violence" under which it asks where in the spectrum the ideology is situated, using a systematic categorization to reveal particular aspects of violent radicalization.

"Extreme right/left, Islamist, nationalist, anti-globalisation, etc," a footnote in the document explains.

This description fits best on the many groups subscribing to violent interpretations of "Jihad," which take the form a holy war of Islam against Western culture and countries. But it can apply to radical left and right organizations as well.

The means to accomplish this is to "facilitate, focus and improve data compilation, by increasing both the quantity and the quality of information obtained by other, non-specific means or instruments." The advantage of this will be a more efficient collaboration between the police, intelligence services and private security corporations of all 27 member states and institutions of the European Union itself.

For example, Europol is already engaged with the mission to "generate lists of those involved in radicalising/recruiting or transmitting radicalising messages and to take appropriate steps".

It remains unclear if the instrument could categorize an entire religion as a violence fostering ideology, as some people, such as GeertWilders, part of the Dutch government and therefore part of the EU Council, has argued in the case of Islam. The declared goal of the instrument in preventing terrorism, and ample evidence, would support such a categorization. Most cases of homegrown terrorists have involved individuals who converted to the Islam, or immigrants from Muslim countries.

Left or right groups and individuals could be identified as a systematic threat as well, fear some affected persons and leftist political parties, which is possible given the regular acts of violence occurring in this milieu. The German socialist party "Die Linke" issued an official request to the German government, concerned that the planned instrument could be targeted at people and groups with a different political opinion, because the definitions in the legislative document are kept very vague.

The answer to this concern was, that the participation, for example providing information to the database, is not mandatory for the single nations, and Germany will not take part in it. The instrument, filed under "Enfopol 78", was proposed under the Spanish presidency of the Council of the European Union, the main decision-making body of the E.U. which can propose and pass laws, with many of them subject to a vote in the European Parliament as well.

Last updated: 11:26 a.m. EST