Counter Terrorism Group From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia The Counter Terrorism Group (CTG) is an informal grouping of intelligence agencies from 30 European countries.
It was founded in 2002 and includes agencies from all 28 European Union members, Norway and Switzerland.[1]
Under the chairmanship of the Dutch intelligence agency AIVD the group is creating a virtual platform to improve exchanging intelligence on terrorism between European agencies.[2] According to the AIVD this process will be completed by July 1, 2016.
After the attacks on September 11th, 2001, as well as the cessation of the European Council which occurred on September 21st, 2001, security services from the heads of the European Union Member States established the Counter Terrorism Group. The CTG was set up as a cooperation group specifically focused on counter terrorism. It comes from another European Group called Club de Berne.
The first meeting of the Counter Terrorism Group was in November 2001 and was conducted in the Netherlands in the city of Hague. The meeting was chaired by the Belgian service and was assembled by the Netherlands' National Security Service, also known as the BVD.
According to the International Institute for Strategic Studies, ‘The Military Balance 2004-2005,’ it was estimated that, across the world, there were around 18,000 terrorists trained by Al-Qaeda, but it was unknown how many were active in Europe.