Quotes by Gijs Vries

• We're still stymied by the old stand-off between those who wish to fight terrorism and resistance fighters.
• Terrorists have failed in what is arguably al Qaida's most important objective - to trigger revolutions.
• In intelligence work, there are limits to the amount of information one can share. Confidentiality is essential.
• Look at Iraq; look at Afghanistan, where at great personal physical risk people have gone to the polls and have rejected the appeal from Bin Laden and his allies to stay at home.
• If you combat an international phenomenon, it is indispensable to share information internationally.
• You can't get closer to the heart of national sovereignty than national security and intelligence services.
• If information ends up in the wrong hands, the lives of people very often are immediately at risk.
• I remain optimistic. What we've seen in Europe and the rest of the world is that freedom has a much stronger attraction than radical fundamentalism.
• Europe has a long and tragic history of mostly domestic terrorism.
• We still lack a global definition of terrorism.
• We remain vulnerable. There is no such thing as 100 percent security against terrorism.
• In the fight against terrorism, national agencies keep full control over their police forces, security and intelligence agencies and judicial authorities.
• We have an integrated picture of the threat from outside and from within that is provided not only to our foreign ministers but also to our justice and interior ministers.
• In situations of military conflict, civil strife, lawlessness, bad governance, and human rights violations, terrorists find it easier to hide, train and prepare their attacks.
• We are familiar with terrorism. But indiscriminate, cross-border, religiously motivated terrorism is new.
• Ultimately, freedom and democracy are stronger than fear and tyranny.
• There is a series of sectors which could be severely disrupted by terrorist attacks, particularly if they were to happen in several member states simultaneously.
• I have never come across a technology that doesn't change. This is inevitable. You have to adapt your systems as technology develops.
• The European Borders Agency in Warsaw has been created to help border forces in Europe cooperate more.
• Indiscriminate attacks on civilians ought, under all circumstances, to be illegal in war as in peacetime.
• Muslim organisations tend to have a low level of organisation. The communities in Europe are quite diverse.
• If you exchange information internationally, you must strengthen data protection. Those are two sides of the same coin.
• Terrorists always have the advantage of surprise.
• The central role in the fight against terrorism is with national authorities.
• Terrorists have failed to trigger mass conflict between Muslims and non-Muslims in Europe. We should draw strength from that fact.
• The idea is to have global standards. There is so much travel that if you just had a regional standard, it would probably ultimately have to be changed.
• The key to tackling Islamist fundamentalism and terrorism from the Islamist community is in the hands of moderate Muslims.
• The majority of the world's Muslims do not believe that terrorism is a legitimate strategy or that Islam is incompatible with democracy.
• Our strategy should be to strengthen the hand of moderate Muslims.
• The violent radicals do not legitimately represent the overwhelming majority of the world's Muslims.
• There are no automatic links between poverty and terrorism. Among millions of poor people in the world, only a few turn to terrorism.
• It's important that we work very closely with moderate Muslim forces locally, nationally and internationally.
• Police forces collect information to be used in a public court to get people convicted. Security services gather information that does not necessarily lead to people being prosecuted and in many cases needs to remain confidential.