Thousands of Europeans have joined ISIS in Syria

Thousands of Europeans have travelled to Syria to join ISIS, the EU Commissioner for Justice has revealed. “At the European level, we estimate that 5,000 to 6,000 individuals have left for Syria, a majority of them, 1,450 people, are French nationals,” Vera Jourova told Le Figaro newspaper on Monday.

The EU official expressed concern that the figures are underestimates, as foreign fighters are hard to keep track of. She said that the EU is considering further measures to prevent more Europeans from joining Jihadist groups, with preventive rather than suppressive measures being favoured. “We’ve allotted a budget of €2.5 million to provide training for prison and probation staff, as well as that of the European prosecutor,” she added.

The EU is accelerating the sharing of intelligence and cooperation between police forces and court systems across Europe. “We want the exchange of information to intensify between Europol and Eurojust, and this exchange should become systematic and automatic,” insisted Jourova. “As such, joint investigation teams are being created so that prosecutors and police officers from several EU countries can work together.”

Jourova said that she supports the appointment of a European public prosecutor to investigate financial corruption in the EU budget before expanding his or her powers to look into cross-border crimes such as human trafficking.