Politics & Power Quote by Gijs de Vries

“The central role in the fight against terrorism is with national authorities” is bureaucratic language doing political combat in a suit and tie. Gijs de Vries, an EU-era counterterrorism coordinator by trade, isn’t elevating the nation-state because he thinks Brussels is useless; he’s signaling the limits of legitimacy. Counterterrorism lives in the places where the state can arrest, prosecute, surveil, and, crucially, be held to account. That’s not just operational reality. It’s a quiet argument about sovereignty: when fear spikes, voters tolerate extraordinary powers only if they can still name the people responsible.

The phrasing is careful. “Central role” leaves room for everyone else to have a role, too: EU agencies, intelligence-sharing platforms, border cooperation, harmonized laws. It’s an assertion of primacy without declaring a turf war. The subtext is a preemptive defense against two critiques that often arrive together after an attack: that supranational institutions are either overreaching (threatening civil liberties) or underperforming (failing to prevent violence). De Vries threads the needle by framing the EU as a coordinator and multiplier, not the commanding general.

Context matters: post-9/11 Europe was building common tools while facing domestic sensitivities around policing, minority communities, and constitutional constraints. National authorities are where counterterrorism becomes intimate and risky - where errors look like discrimination, and successes look like invisible competence. By locating the “central role” at home, de Vries is also trying to keep the political blast radius of counterterror policy from detonating the European project itself.