It is not surprising that the European Union?s patchwork of policies makes it vulnerable to a cohesive stance against terrorism. While the EU is meant to support economic cohesion and easy movement, terrorists and criminals have been able to take advantage of the freedom of movement as well. And, to a certain extent in the past, EU states did not necessarily cooperate on combating terrorism, especially if they disagreed about states? policies or were sympathetic toward nationalist terrorist groups. In the aftermath of the 9/11 attacks , revelations that terrorist cells were operating across borders in Europe became apparent, and the seriousness of the threat became more apparent. There has been much more cooperation and cohesion between members states and intelligence and information sharing in the post-9/11 era. European institutions are taking the terrorist threat far more seriously, as witnessed by the creation of a counterterrorism coordinator or czar.

However, while these steps are positive, they are not enough. The European Union is still made up of sovereign states that retain and control distinct national security policies. One of the key, controversial discussion points raised in the Washington Post article was which EU state would be willing to shoot down a commercial jetliner suspected of conducting a 9/11 type of attack. As the Air Europa flight example illustrates, there would be major problems in response should an actual terrorist attack take place. Part of the problem is that a rogue flight may be only over national airspace for a short time, or there may not be national interceptor capability to monitor the flight in certain countries. The question arises: how do these countries deal with chain of command issues in such a complicated setting? The US was caught off guard on 9/11 with these issues, but it is also a much simpler case compared to all of Europe. While the EU countries are looking into these issues, they all seem to be coming up with different interpretations on what to do; this is not a positive development for any sort of integrated strategy.

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