By Javier Villamor, European Conservative.
The Commission lists as possible terrorist “motivations” the rejection of European values, anti-LGBT sentiment, or “anti-system ideologies.”
The European Commission presented its new strategy, “ProtectEU: Agenda to prevent and counter terrorism,” an ambitious document that seeks to update the Union’s response to an evolving threat environment.
On paper, the initiative aims to anticipate risks, prevent radicalisation, and strengthen police and judicial cooperation. In practice, however, it seeks to broaden the concept of “terrorism” and “violent extremism” to such an extent that it ultimately encompasses increasingly diffuse political and cultural categories (and is convenient for those in power).
The result is a framework in which the boundary between criminal violence and ideological dissent becomes dangerously blurred.
The document itself acknowledges that, although jihadist terrorism remains “the most prominent and lethal threat,” terrorist actors are driven by a “growing range of motivations,” including the “rejection of European democratic values,” antisemitism, anti-Muslim hatred and, among others, “anti-LGBTQ+ hatred,” misogyny, racism, “anti-system ideologies,” or even “nihilism.”
The additional problem is no longer only what they call combating crimes “motivated by hatred or violence”—something already codified in most national legal systems, albeit in an imprecise manner—but integrating this open-ended catalogue of motivations into the strategic umbrella of counterterrorism policy.
In other words, terrorism ceases to be defined primarily by the use of violence for political purposes and instead becomes a flexible category that can include cultural attitudes, moral positions, or criticism of the European institutional order.
Who defines those values, and what happens when a legitimate political force questions certain policies coming from Brussels?