WASHINGTON - European nations are poised to ratify a treaty that would give the European Union sweeping power over the continent's security policies, raising concerns among homeland security specialists here that keeping track of suspected terrorists across the Atlantic may become more difficult for the United States.
Although the EU Reform Treaty has received scant attention in the United States, analysts say it could profoundly affect American interests. Until now, the US government has worked nation-to-nation with Europeans on homeland security matters from issuing visas to sharing intelligence.
But the treaty, which will be signed next month and subject to ratification by member countries next year, would increasingly centralize authority over security in the EU, which has been less willing to cooperate with the United States than the governments of some European countries.
"The treaty will be a big deal for law enforcement and antiterrorism agencies in Europe and the US," said Stewart Baker, the assistant secretary for policy at the US Department of Homeland Security. "Europeans will be transferring responsibility for some of their law enforcement to Brussels. That's bound to change the way American agencies work with their counterparts in Europe."
The Bush administration has been largely satisfied with the level of cooperation it has received from European countries on counterterrorism. But some US security analysts worry that if the Reform Treaty is ratified, the larger EU government would be more likely to cite privacy concerns to shield data or to allow political differences with the United States to interfere with cooperation.
Earlier this year, several said, the EU Parliament condemned European nations that had quietly cooperated with the CIA on its "extraordinary rendition" program to seize, transfer, and interrogate terrorism suspects without legal rights. The Parliament also has been reluctant to share data about European airline passengers flying into the United States, citing EU privacy laws.
"There is a concern that if and when the European Parliament is engaged, it is not going to be helpful to law enforcement," said Stewart Verdery, who was the Bush administration's top homeland security policy official from 2003 to 2005. He added, "Clearly the Parliament has been to the left of the European governments' structures as a whole."
Sally McNamara, a European specialist at the conservative Heritage Foundation, said the EU has often been "anti-American" in recent years, more quick than many of its members to take exception to US government policies on a range of matters. She warned that a stronger EU might punish the United States in future disputes by restricting cooperation in counterterrorism efforts.
The reform treaty would give the EU greater authority over a range of security issues including immigration, asylum, freezing the assets of suspected terrorists, criminal defendant rights, defining terrorism-related offenses, and making rules for the "collection, storage, processing, analysis, and exchange of relevant information" for law-enforcement purposes.
The accord would not give the EU exclusive control over security matters; instead the EU and member-nations would largely share authority, with an extensive process for resolving disputes. But most analysts believe the EU position would prevail on broad matters involving cooperation with the United States. In addition, they say, the EU's new authority over security matters would affect the United States both in the negotiation of any new policy agreements and with cooperation on individual counterterrorism cases.
Upcoming policy issues to be negotiated include an effort by the United States to require European travelers to register their fingerprints before visiting America, and the future of US rules that allow citizens of some European countries, but not others, to travel to the United States without first obtaining a visa - rules the EU has already denounced as discriminatory.
As an example of how involvement by the EU can complicate negotiations over security policies, analysts point to a dispute over data about airline passenger name records. After the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, the United States wanted to set up a system to check names and addresses of people flying in from Europe against watch lists of suspected terrorists.
Under existing law, the EU controlled air travel regulations. The Bush administration struck a deal with the European Commission - the EU's executive branch - to get the records in 2004. But the European Parliament voted against the deal, and an EU court struck it down, saying the deal violated EU privacy laws. The EU and United States finally struck a replacement deal in July.
"The European Parliament is out, basically, to frustrate the American-led war on terrorism," said McNamara. "They are the bastion of human rights and think that the war on terrorism is an evil thing. That's why we [at the think-tank] believe that further European integration in these areas is a bad idea."
The Reform Treaty might also affect US homeland security by complicating the sharing of sensitive classified intelligence.
For now, even if the Reform Treaty is ratified, the United States and individual European nations would still be able to share high-level intelligence - without including the EU - when investigating specific terrorists plots. But if the treaty is ratified, the EU could play a larger role in sharing watch lists of suspected terrorists across the Atlantic Ocean, analysts said.
Paul Pillar, a former senior CIA counterterrorism official who left government in 2005 and now teaches at Georgetown University, said US officials have long preferred to share intelligence with individual nations that they trust not to leak the information. Pillar said his former colleagues would be leery about handing sensitive classified information to the 27-member EU.
"The more countries you get involved and the more it becomes multilateral, the harder it is to deal effectively with matters of counterterrorism because of problems of sharing information more broadly," Pillar said.
"This would come into play when dealing with a huge bureaucracy of multiple nationalities, as opposed to just the British or just the French or just the Germans," he said. "It's not that the US doesn't want to deal with the EU as a policy preference - it's just the practical matter of dealing with classified information."
