Amnesty warns EU values, rights slipping amid security clampdown

Brussels-based justice and home affairs expert Camino Mortera-Martinez, of the Centre for European Reform, agrees that emergency measures have escalated, deepening an old split between those supporting state intervention and others championing privacy and individual rights.

“The question for me is do these measures make sense, are they reasonable?” she says. “It’s not possible in the current context not to have invasive measures on civil liberties in fighting terrorism, because of the exceptional state in which we’re in.”

“As the attacks in Paris and Brussels have shown, we criticize states a lot,” she adds. “And whenever they miss one, we criticize them as well.”