Roundtable at the Internal Security Fund last Trilogue, in Brussels. Statement by Monika HOHLMEIER (EPP,DE), rapporteur.

Brussels

common security and defence policy (T)

DORNEANU, Valer (RO)

HOHLMEIER, Monika (EPP, DE)

Internal Security Fund last trilogue: statement by Monika HOHLMEIER (EPP,DE), rapporteur, and illustration shots of the meeting

Atmosphere during the trilogue meeting (12 shots)

SOUNDBITE (English), Monika HOHLMEIER (EPP, DE), I am very glad to announce that the Parliament has finalised the trilogue successfully about the internal security fund, with the Commission and with the Council. So the Internal Security Fund is taking care of the funding of member states and Commission's actions in the area of security. This is a very important area because we see with the attacks in Vienna, in Paris, terrorism and serious crime is international is a cross-border issue. So we needed to update our internal security fund. And explicitly, we needed to update the goals in our internal security fund, though this time the information exchange was very important for the Parliament because we see that a lack of information exchange leads to very severe damages in our population, as it was the case in Nice, as it was a case in Vienna.

SOUNDBITE (English), Monika HOHLMEIER (EPP, DE), We have put the focus on the information exchange and cross-border and we will refocus thirdly on capacity building either so that there is enough funding for the the instruments that are needed for the security institutions. And there was one last very important point for us. This was a kind of better cooperation with intelligence institutions. We have different intelligence institutions working on European level, working on national level. In the case of Vienna, there were some informations, but they were not exchanged, they were not used between the institutions of intelligence and of security. So there we said necessary information must be exchanged to save lives.

SOUNDBITE (English), Monika HOHLMEIER (EPP, DE), In the next days, the Council will take a positive decision on the Internal Security Fund (ISF). The European Parliament's committee will take a positive decision and then the Plenary will have a positive vote on this decision. So at the end, it's a positive outcome for the ISF. I am very happy that we achieved it, not only with the ISF but with two other funds related to migration and asylum and related to the border security of our European borders. Now, with the third one, the Internal Security Fund. So the Parliament is delivering.