Fifth progress report towards an effective and genuine Security Union

This is the fifth monthly report on the progress made towards building an effective and genuine Security Union and covers developments under two main pillars: tackling terrorism, organised and cyber crime and the means that support them; and strengthening our defences and building resilience against those threats.

A prerequisite of building an effective and genuine Security Union is ensuring the timely adoption and full and effective implementation of EU legislation. The 13 December 2016 Joint Declaration of the Presidents of the Parliament, Council and Commission agreed 58 legislative priorities for 2017. Within this are a number of pending proposals which are key to the delivery of the Security Union including: the Terrorism Directive; the Firearms Directive; the EU Entry Exit System (EES); the European Travel Information and Authorisation System (ETIAS); the Directive on Money Laundering and Terrorist Financing; the European Criminal Records Information System (ECRIS) and the Regulation on Privacy and Electronic Communications (ePrivacy) Regulation. Reaching swift agreements on these proposals is vital and this report will look at the current state of play on each.

The focus on implementation also applies to existing legislation, including instruments that are still in the phase of transposition. This report also provides an update on the key files in this category such as Explosive Precursors, Passenger Name Records (PNR), the Prüm Decisions on sharing vehicle, fingerprint and DNA data between Member States and on the transposition of the Network Information Security (NIS) Directive. In addition to progress on legislative files this report covers implementation of some key Security Union non-legislative files in the area of building EU resilience such as the Commission's work on countering radicalisation through the Radicalisation Awareness Network, on Soft Target Protection, and on Aviation Security in third countries.

The next monthly report in April will focus on organised crime and the priorities for the 2017 EU "Policy Cycle" which provides a strategic framework to reinforce effective cooperation among national law enforcement agencies, EU agencies and EU institutions in this area as well as on operational police and judicial cooperation, including Joint Investigation Teams.