Meeting of the&nbsp;Committee on Civil Liberties, Justice and Home Affairs&nbsp;(LIBE) on the Eurojust 2016 Foreign Terrorist Fighters Report, in the EP in Brussels. Presentation by Mich&egrave;le CONINSX, President of Eurojust, and intervention by Roberta METSOLA (EPP, MT).

Brussels

meeting

speech

fight against terrorism (T)

METSOLA, Roberta (EPP, MT, EP President)

CONINSX, Michèle (BE)

Eurojust 2016 Foreign Terrorist Fighters Report: extracts from the presentation by Michèle CONINSX, President of Eurojust

SOUNDBITE (English), CONINSX;  Mich&#232;le , President of Eurojust, My first message in fact is that international judicial cooperation is more important than than ever if we want to efficient and effective in this fight, and that goes together  with evidence, evidence is crucial, and not only the evidence gathering and the sharing and the using of the evidence but also getting it in a speedy way.

SOUNDBITE (English), CONINSX, Mich&egrave;le, President of Eurojust, And our figures are good because we see that in our operational work we have since two years a five fold of cases, much more coordination and meetings, much more joint investigations. And the mutual recognition instruments like the European arrest warrants, like the joint investigation teams, and like the European investigation Order which saw the light on the 22 of May this year, will help us to get that objective.

SOUNDBITE (English), CONINSX, Mich&egrave;le, President of Eurojust, Concluded court cases in 2014: 180, 2015:218, 2016: 275. So we see a gradual increase in the cases overall in the EU. 

SOUNDBITE (English), CONINSX, Mich&egrave;le, President of Eurojust, Individuals tried, and these are figures we have been giving to Europol in order to have in include in the  report, 2014: 244 persons tried, 2015: 513 people tried and 2016: 580. We see that 2016 there were convictions, especially in relation to the fight against djihadist terrorism, in 17 Member States. And we see that the conviction rate was amazing, 89% of cases led to a conviction, an acquittal rate of 11% and that means that we have been quite successful. 

SOUNDBITE (English), CONINSX, Mich&egrave;le, President of Eurojust, However to returnees, we see gradually that the number of returnees does not seem to be increasing. On the contrary, there is more chance that they are going to be relocated in the war zones, that there will be shifts  from Iraq, Syria to other regions in the neighbourhood. But we see however a new trend, that females and young children are coming back to Europe, and they need special attention.

SOUNDBITE (English), CONINSX, Mich&egrave;le, President of Eurojust, We don't have figures. We started to work on this in 2012, seven countries in 2012 had tens of foreign terrorist fighters going back and forth, and the numbers increased gradually, we were talking at certain moments about 5000 people going back and forth.

SOUNDBITE (English), Roberta METSOLA (EPP, MT), Could you, to the extent possible, give us a little bit of an outline, I mena are there huge differences between Member States' authorities in how they tackle intelligence?

SOUNDBITE (English), CONINSX, Mich&egrave;le, President of Eurojust, Intelligence, law enforcement and justice should work hand in hand. And we see that there are different ways of looking at this. And it is even more complex if see that it is evidence retrieved by military, or by military intelligence on the spot, it is hard to get in our criminal proceedings.