THE STATE OF THE EUROPEAN UNION

THE STATE OF THE EUROPEAN UNION

and Visa Facilitation Agreements, which came

into force in December of that year. Nigeria’s

relationship with the EU with regard to migra-

tion issues dates to April 2008, when an EU mi-

gration mission visited the country. Since then

there have been six dialogue meetings at a local

level on migration and development which have

led to the EU presenting a draft Common

Agenda on Migration and Mobility to the

Nigerian authorities in October 2013. At pre-

sent a suitable date for the signing of this

Agreement is currently being arranged. Finally,

South Africa and the EU began a Strategic

Association in 2007. Since then, within the

framework of the Mixed Cooperation Council

established between them, the two parties have

organized a Dialogue Forum on Migration.

Managing a collateral phenomenon

of migratory movements: jihadism

In recent months, migratory movements around

the Mediterranean, both from south to north

and from north to south, have been at the centre

of a new phenomenon that makes the process of

managing such movements more complex and

challenging. The journeys of European citizens,

many although not all of them from North

African or Muslim backgrounds, to countries

with a strong Al-Qaeda or DAESH presence –

particularly Syria, Iraq and Yemen – and their re-

turn, heavily radicalized, to their countries of ori-

gin, constitute a major challenge to those seeking

to manage flows of migrants between countries

on both shores of the Mediterranean, and are an

indisputable threat to the security of the EU.

The terrible attacks in Paris in January this

year against satirical magazine

Charlie Hebdo

and against a kosher supermarket, in which 17

people died at the hands of terrorists who had

travelled to Syria and Yemen before returning to

France to perpetrate these acts, has reopened

debate about measures to monitor and control

travellers going to and returning from countries

such as Syria, Yemen, Libya and Iraq. The added

complication arises from the fact that, in order

to reach their destinations, many people travel

by alternative routes. For example, those travel-

ling to Syria to join DAESH first make their way

to Istanbul before crossing the Turkish border.

This was the case of Hayat Boumeddiene, the

wife of Amedy Coulibaly, one of the Paris terror-

ists, who drove to Madrid with him before

catching a flight from Madrid to Istanbul on 2

January, while her husband returned to Paris to

take part in the attacks. However, the solution

lies not in restricting freedom of movement but

in improving the mechanisms for sharing infor-

mation and sharing data between security forc-

es and intelligence services, making it possible

to fight terrorism effectively at the European

level. At the same time, there is the question of

how to deal with people who frequently consult

jihadist websites and how to prosecute for ter-

rorism offences those who travel to conflict

zones to join a violent group. Here, the chal-

lenge is how to guarantee security without dam-

aging our freedom. Another complex and con-

troversial issue is the Passenger Name Record

(PNR). In the European Parliament, several peo-

ple have indicated the need to establish limits on

the information contained in this record and the

filters applied, to prevent the establishment of

discriminatory criteria based on the origin or

name of passengers. The President of the

Commission, Donald Tusk, has stated

that he

will put pressure on the European Parliament to

reduce its opposition to the proposed European

Reference 5.