§ 47. Mr. ColvinTo ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department what recent talks he has had with European Ministers about security and frontier controls following implementation of the single European market, in particular in connection with the fight against terrorism.
§ Mr. HurdI attended a meeting of Trevi Ministers in Athens on 9 December under the presidency of the Greek Minister for Public Order, Mr. Petsos. We agreed that Trevi should pursue its study of border checks, which had been instituted at my initiative at our previous meeting in Munich, so that the changes to take place on 1 January 1993 should not adversely affect prevention of terrorism, drug trafficking and other serious crime in the Community.
In view of recent events and the important contribution that effective extradition arrangements can make to counter terrorism, we also agreed to ask our Foreign Minister colleagues to arrange for the working group on judicial co-operation to examine co-operation over the preparation and processing of extradition applications as part of its consideration of the subject as a whole. We also agreed an updated assessment of the terrorist threat to the Community countries.
In recent months I have also had bilateral discussions with my French, Italian and Spanish counterparts on terrorism, including the security aspects of frontier checks and controls.