Gijs de Vries Quotations

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.

In situations of military conflict, civil strife, lawlessness, bad governance, and human rights violations, terrorists find it easier to hide, train and prepare their attacks.

In the fight against terrorism, national agencies keep full control over their police forces, security and intelligence agencies and judicial authorities.

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

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

In intelligence work, there are limits to the amount of information one can share. Confidentiality is essential.

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

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

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

If you exchange information internationally, you must strengthen data protection. Those are two sides of the same coin.

Our strategy should be to strengthen the hand of moderate Muslims.

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

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

Ultimately, freedom and democracy are stronger than fear and tyranny.

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

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.

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.

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

The violent radicals do not legitimately represent the overwhelming majority of the world's Muslims.

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

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

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

It's important that we work very closely with moderate Muslim forces locally, nationally and internationally.

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.

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 have failed in what is arguably al Qaida's most important objective - to trigger revolutions.

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.

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.

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

We still lack a global definition of terrorism.

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.

Terrorists have failed in what is arguably al Qaida's most important objective - to trigger revolutions.

Terrorists always have the advantage of surprise.