EU Security Union Progress Report

The EU Commission reported on progress made towards an effective and genuine Security Union, including priorities like countering radicalisation, enhancing cybersecurity and protecting public spaces. As security is identified as a key priority in the Joint Declaration on the EU's legislative priorities for 2018-19, the Commission is also setting out a number of measures to be taken over the coming months to strengthen support to Member States and speed up EU work.

In its interim report, the High-Level Expert Group on Radicalisation – set up by the Commission in July 2017 – called for more systematic exchanges on anti-radicalisation between Member States, practitioners and researchers as well as stronger EU support. As a first step to follow up on these recommendations, the Commission will strengthen the coordination at EU level to prevent terrorism and the action against radicalisation in prisons, and against terrorist propaganda both online and offline. The Commission is urging online platforms to speed up their efforts to remove online terrorist content as quickly as possible, and is looking into more specific steps to improve the response to terrorist content online, before deciding whether legislation is needed.

As regards the protection of public spaces, cooperation is being intensified between private operators of public spaces, such as transport hubs, stadiums and shopping centres, and local and regional authorities.

The report also took stock of the progress made in the implementation of other priority files under the European Agenda for Security including information exchange, terrorist financing, security research and aviation security, as well as the external dimension.

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