The development of the European Union counter-terrorism framework

Despite long experience with terrorism, homegrown and exogenous, Europe has only recently developed a comprehensive legal and institutional framework for counterterrorism. The first truly supranational European counter-terrorism (CT) legal measures were developed after 1992, with the ratification of the Treaty on European Union (TEU), now commonly called the Maastricht Treaty. With Anti-Terrorism Collaboration" now a part of the so-called third pillar of the treaty, terrorism became a joint EU security issue, rather than a domestic problem for the respective member states. The Ell's role in the fight against terrorism is quite limited because the primary responsibility in the fight against terrorism lies with the individual member states. This article deals with the adoption and development of EU antiterrorist measures dating from the U.S terrorist attacks on 9/11 through the Madrid attacks,seen as an accelarator for the EU antiterrorist policy until the London attacks as a final trigger of the EU policy. During this period all main strategies and legal instruments in the fight against terrorism were developed, some of them still waiting for their implementation.