Useless Position?

Dutch diplomat Gijs de Vries left his job as EU counter-terrorism coordinator in March for personal reasons. He was the first to hold the position, which was created after the Madrid train bombings of March 2004.

De Vries' job was to make sure that EU members continued to fight cross-border crime and share "terror-related" intelligence information.

"When de Vries was named, it was a post with visibility," said Cristina Gallach, a spokeswoman for EU foreign policy chief Javier Solana. "We needed a point of reference for the outside world."

Pleasing US officials

A senior EU official told AFP news service that the creation of the post was "above all a move to satisfy the press and the United States, which likes to have a Mr X" it can pick up the phone to talk to.

De Vries did travel to the United States as the EU's "Mr Terrorism," meeting with then Secretary of State Colin Powell. But in reality his mission was quite modest: mainly checking that the 2004 "anti-terror action plan" was applied and improving cooperation with third countries on cross-border crime.

No sense of urgency

Since de Vries' departure, EU officials have not been in a hurry to replace him.

"There was some internal debate about the possibility of replacing" de Vries, the official said. "The post wasn't too high-profile, not too exciting, so his departure didn't really upset anyone much."

Another EU official, also talking to AFP on condition of anonymity, said: "If the Germans had wanted to make it a priority, they could have" during their six month EU presidency which ended on June 30.

Redefining the role

Gallach meanwhile said that good EU legislation is in now place, strong relations have been developed with the United States and good work is being done with other non-EU members. Cooperation has also been improved between the national police forces.

"It's time to redefine the post, take another look at its profile," she said.

Instead of a politician or a technocrat, the idea would be "to have a police officer, with strong experience, unknown to the wider public but known for his credibility," the senior official said.

"He would come from a state with experience in dealing with terrorism and not from somewhere like Sweden or Finland," he said.

"He wouldn't overshadow Solana, but would have access to services that could provide him with the sort of information you don't find in the media," he added.

But the right candidate is proving hard to find. An Italian police officer had been mooted as a possibility but "his English was not good enough", and so the process drags on.