EU: There was still a "substantial and sustained threat of further terrorist attacks in Europe", the European Union's counter-terrorism co-ordinator, Mr Gijs de Vries, told a conference on "The War on Terror" at the Royal Irish Academy in Dublin yesterday.
"The threat emanates mainly from Islamist networks, groups or individuals, though non-Islamist groups as well continue to pose risks to security."
One of the priority areas identified by the EU in the fight against terror was information-sharing, he said. "Timely and accurate information - its collection, analysis and dissemination - is essential to prevent acts of terrorism and to bring terrorist suspects to justice."
Combating terrorist financing was another priority: "Terrorists need money to prepare and carry out attacks. Identifying and disrupting the mechanisms through which terrorism is financed are therefore key elements of the Union's counter-terrorism strategy."
The EU had drawn up lists of individuals and groups whose assets needed to be frozen, but the methods involved in the financing of terrorism appeared to have changed since 9/11.
"Intelligence indicates that there is now less use of the regular banking system.
"This implies that terrorists may be seeking alternative means of moving funds, for example cash couriers and alternative remittance systems."
The United Nations and the EU had similar agendas for addressing the factors underlying terrorist recruitment.
"There is general recognition that regional conflicts, bad governance and state failure can provide fertile ground for recruitment into terrorism."
The main objective was to prevent terrorist attacks but, should prevention fail, member-states needed to ensure that essential services were maintained or restored as soon as possible and that emergency relief was provided to citizens and businesses.
In March, EU heads of state and government pledged to "act jointly in a spirit of solidarity" if one of them was the victim of a terrorist attack.
At the EU-US summit in June, both sides committed themselves to "take concrete steps to expand and improve our capabilities to prevent and respond to bio-terrorism".
Mr de Vries added: "Several terrorist groups, including al-Qaeda, are actively seeking capabilities to carry out an attack with weapons of mass destruction.
"The risk of these weapons being used, in addition to conventional tactics, is real."
Mr de Vries is a former deputy minister of the interior in the Netherlands and was leader of the Liberal and Democratic Group in the European Parliament before being succeeded by his Irish colleague, Mr Pat Cox.
He was a Dutch Government negotiator in the European Convention.
He told The Irish Times: "My role is to assist Javier Solana as secretary-general of the (European) Council in making sure that we can manage the complexity of a Union which has just expanded to 25 member-states covering 450 million people."
Addressing the conference on the al-Qaeda train bombings in Spain this year, Prof Luis Moreno, senior research fellow at the Spanish National Research Council in Madrid, said that a direct cause-and-effect relationship between the bomb attacks and the defeat of the Popular Party in the general election three days later could not be definitively drawn.
However, it was more than plausible to believe that sectors of young voters and former left-wing abstentionists had reacted against the government.