There are so many things that can be said following the shocking events in Paris. Many of those things were already been said following the Charlie Hebdo massacre or indeed after the 2005 London bombings or the Atocha outrage in Madrid. The fact is Paris carries with it some common denominators of previous tragedies but some new elements which demand the full attention of Labour members and politicians in the very difficult debate about the balance between our security and freedoms.

Today, as chair of the European parliament’s justice and home affairs committee, I will attend the meeting of European Union interior ministers at the special European council meeting on anti-terrorism in the EU. This meeting will look at whether the EU can add any more value to security policies following the Paris attacks and to assess the effectiveness of current strategies.

What is likely to be discussed are much stronger proposals than anything so far discussed at European level, including possible changes to Schengen borders and information systems, extensions to the gathering of passenger name records, moving from air passengers’ to rail passengers’ data, and the strengthening of intelligence sharing and the assessment of anti-radicalisation measures in different member states.

The Paris attacks in some ways were not unexpected when the phenomenon of so-called ‘foreign fighters,’ radicalised EU citizens, was already high on the European agenda. But the scale of the killings shocked people and has led to much stronger calls for a security response. Some of this response has been targeted towards the external border of the European Union and at the idea that Islamic State is using the refugee crisis as a cover for their brutal activities. This dimension is deeply worrying at the height of an already existential crisis for Europe. It is important to understand that Syrian refugees among others are in fact fleeing Isis and other brutal conflict situations. This does not mean that we should not be vigilant on our external borders – quite the opposite – but it is wrong to conflate the refugee crisis with terrorism.

What is vitally important now is that in planning security and keeping people safe, often seen as the first duty of any government, we must ensure that policies are effective and do not unnecessarily damage our wider freedoms, the very freedoms that terrorists want to harm. A good example of this is to ensure that there is strong support for effective, intelligence-led policing and support for the work of our intelligence services in targeting terrorist cells and activities. But there should be low tolerance for lack of intelligence-sharing between EU countries, a surprising but major issue on the table this Friday, and low tolerance for the easy conflation between the refugee crisis as a whole and jihadi terrorist activity, some of which predates the Syrian war.

The intelligence services and the EU as a whole will have the difficult task of strengthening the external Schengen border and working on all fronts to ensure our security. Jihadist terrorists are capable of using all means to perpetrate acts of terror while the intelligence and security apparatus of EU member states remains by its nature fairly fragmented.

The other key issues that will now be live and important for Labour to both understand and engage with will be the new status quo with much tougher surveillance legislation in more than one country. Here in the United Kingdom with the investigatory powers bill and in France with its strongest national surveillance law to date and new emergency powers, while strongly supported, it is important to be vigilant at all times about the effectiveness and balance in these important measures. Another key and important aspect for Labour in the UK is to promote effective anti-radicalisation measures, many of which were pioneered during our last period of government and which have not been maintained in their strength and resourcing, but are vital now in the current context.

Internal security threats can be a complex mix of cult-like violence and terrorism linked to external situations. What is clear is that, irrespective of our actions in other countries, there will continue to be security threats here in Europe. It is vital therefore for us all to take an interest in getting the balance right between effective security and anti-terrorism policies on the one hand and the protection of our fundamental freedoms on the other.

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Claude Moraes MEP is chair of the European parliament’s justice and home affairs committee and will be attending the European council meeting on anti-terrorism and security this Friday. He tweets @ClaudeMoraesMEP

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Photo: opendemocracy