EU justice and interior ministers adopted on Thursday a new counter-terrorism strategy, as Britain struggled to push through tougher security legislation in the face of dogged opposition.
Building on momentum from the Madrid train bombings in 2004 and the London public transport attacks on July 7 this year, the strategy outlines the EU's security goals and how to make them more understandable to average Europeans.
But issues such as increasing police access to telephone and Internet data and allowing the authorities to shut down extremist web sites remain unresolved, amid concerns over privacy rights.
"The strategy sets out our objectives to prevent new recruits to terrorism; better protect potential targets; pursue and investigate members of existing networks and improve our capability to respond to and manage the consequences of terrorist attacks," the ministers said in their conclusions.
The plan is based on four pillars: cutting the supply of terror recruits, protecting citizens and infrastructure, pursuing and investigating suspects, and responding to the consequences of an attack.
However some of the measures are vague.
The 25-member EU's ministers, meeting in Brussels for two days, say terrorists must be "deprived as far as possible of the opportunities offered by the Internet to communicate and spread technical expertise related to terrorism."
But they fall short of French demands that member states be given extra legal tools to close down a suspect web site.
"The 25 don't all have the same perception about what constitutes a terrorist threat," one diplomat said, on condition of anonymity.
The ministers also agree on the need to retain telecommunications data, which greatly helped investigators track down suspects in the Madrid bombings that killed 191 people in March 2004.
But they do not agree on how long the information should be kept or who should pay the costs such an operation might incur. They are due to debate the issue again on Friday.
A senior official from Britain, which holds the EU's rotating presidency until the end of December, has acknowledged that high hurdles remain.
"The range of views and the difficulty of the issues under examination mean that although I'm positive and hopeful, it's not at all certain that we will be able to reach agreement at the council," he said.
"There's a long range of issues which continue to generate discussion" on the telecoms data alone, he said, also on condition that he not be named.
"They vary from retention periods, through the handling of costs, through access and how to regulate access to the information, to the question of how you do data retention and data security ... just to take a handful."
The measures would oblige businesses to keep details about callers, such as who they spoke to, where and when, and would apply to land telephone lines and mobile phones, text messages, and Internet e-mails and protocols.
Police would not have access to the conversation or message itself.
London also wants information about unanswered communications kept - a controversial demand as it would force the industry into extra spending.
Britain wants to fast-track a European-wide package of anti-terror measures through the European Parliament, the EU's executive commission and the council of member states before the end of the year but success seems unlikely now.
In a letter, EU justice commissioner Franco Frattini urged the ministers to rally around his compromise proposal.
"I very much hope that the institutions concerned come to an agreement by the end of the year. For that to be possible, member states must show more flexibility than recently demonstrated," he said.
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