Quotes from Gijs de Vries

Indiscriminate attacks on civilians ought, under all circumstances, to be illegal in war as in peacetime.

We remain vulnerable. There is no such thing as 100 percent security against terrorism.

If you combat an international phenomenon, it is indispensable to share information internationally.

The European Borders Agency in Warsaw has been created to help border forces in Europe cooperate more.

I have never come across a technology that doesn't change. This is inevitable. You have to adapt your systems as technology develops.

Muslim organisations tend to have a low level of organisation. The communities in Europe are quite diverse.

We're still stymied by the old stand-off between those who wish to fight terrorism and resistance fighters.

We still lack a global definition of terrorism.

We are familiar with terrorism. But indiscriminate, cross-border, religiously motivated terrorism is new.

There are no automatic links between poverty and terrorism. Among millions of poor people in the world, only a few turn to terrorism.

The central role in the fight against terrorism is with national authorities.

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.

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.

Terrorists always have the advantage of surprise.

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.

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.

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.

If information ends up in the wrong hands, the lives of people very often are immediately at risk.

Europe has a long and tragic history of mostly domestic terrorism.

Terrorists have failed to trigger mass conflict between Muslims and non-Muslims in Europe. We should draw strength from that fact.

You can't get closer to the heart of national sovereignty than national security and intelligence services.

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.

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.