Duitsland pleit voor Europees veiligheidsplan vrachtvluchten (en)
EUOBSERVER / BRUSSELS - German interior minister Thomas de Maiziere is on Monday (8 November) to table a five-point plan on how to enhance air cargo security on board passenger planes crossing the EU following Yemeni and Greek bomb plots last week.
"National measures are not very effective," Mr de Maiziere told the mass-circulation tabloid Bild am Sonntag over the weekend. "That's why, at my request, the interior ministers are going to discuss this question in Brussels on Monday. I am going to present a plan."
The proposal is to include an evaluation of airport security in countries outside the EU. Berlin also wants to set up a blacklist of airports considered to be a high risk, with special checks on freight coming from listed locations
The plan also foresees more common security standards at the EU level - suspicious parcels, such as printers from Yemen sent to a Jewish community in the US, would in future trigger special checks, Mr de Maiziere is to suggest.
A working group of EU interior and transport ministers are set to come up with proposals in December.
Germany has already banned freight and passenger planes from Yemen after a bomb hidden in printer cartridges sent from the country and addressed to a synagogue in Chicago passed undetectend through the Cologne airport and was later discovered in England.
The bomb had a remote-control device emabling it to blow up the plane mid-air. An Al-Qaeda affiliated group claimed responsibility for the plan and a second parcel bomb, which was detected in Dubai.
Just a few days later, the German chancellery was on high alert after it managed to detonate a mail bomb sent from Greece and addressed to Chancellor Angela Merkel. A dozen other similar envelopes were sent to embassies in Athens. One sent to Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi made it onboard a cargo plane to Bologne, where it was detonated by security forces.
Some 60 percent of parcels and air mail is sent via passenger planes, with security arrangements varying among countries, carrier companies and airports. Security gaps are encountered especially when it comes to cargo flying in from countries outside the EU.
In tightening security measures across the bloc, the EU commission has warned of imposing too many restrictions.
"Panic is not the remedy. We have to come up with a proportionate response and close the potential loopholes, but security can never be at 100 percent," EU transport commissioner Siim Kallas said on Friday after a day-long meeting of air security experts.
"I am afraid that the proposed measures will be too big of a burden for companies and airports to implement. And if they are impossible to implement, it creates an even bigger [security] gap than the one we are trying to fill," he added, citing the concerns of "businesses."