BRUSSELS (Sputnik) — There is a possibility that amid defeats in Syria and Iraq, Daesh militants might transfer their financial resources to support terrorist activities in member countries of the European Union, EU Commissioner for the Security Union Julian King said on Thursday.
"As we squeeze Daesh on the ground in Iraq and Syria, they are moving quite large amounts of funding out of Iraq and Syria … There could be a risk … of new sources of funding for terrorism. We have to prepare for that and see what we need to do to strengthen the measures to combat it," King said during a press conference.
A new EU expert group on radicalization will submit its recommendations to the European Commission on stepping up efforts to counter radicalization in the bloc's member states by the end of this year, King said.
"Our new expert group on countering radicalization will bring together those front-line practitioners with representatives of national authorities. It will present its first recommendations on strengthening our work in this area by the end of the year."
He stressed that the European Union continues to work on countering terrorism both online and offline in local communities.
"Over the last two years the Europol's Internet Referral Unit has flagged some 35,000 items of online terrorist content in the past 2 years, and in 80-90 percent of cases those have been removed," King said.
Over the past two years, there was a surge of terror attacks, including in such European cities as Paris, Brussels, Nice, Berlin, London, Stockholm and Barcelona. As a result of the increased threat, nations worldwide have been striving to step up their counterterrorism efforts by all available means, typically including the adoption of additional security measures, and by joining various international coalitions.
The European Union, in its turn, has developed several working groups in order to combat online radicalization.
