As the second meeting for this day of the ECOFIN committee started, the Crisis Group entered the room and stated that seven Shell corporations in France have been funding extremist organisations in the Middle East and Northern Africa, going straight to organisations such as ISIS. Twenty two people have already been arrested and eighteen are wanted. This means, we have to wait to see how this case will escalate.
Due to this update, Ministers expressed their concerns and offered their help to France. All countries are in favor of collaboration and in the idea of “preventing is better than healing”, because some countries still do not have the necessary protection, so they all need to be in the same page. Moreover, Hungary marked that the authorities of the European Union should not overshadow each country’s security policy. The developments are continuing and we expect to see where they will end up.
By Vasiliki Katsarou, Journalist of EU Focus, ECOFIN
