EU Leaders Set to Debate Anti-Terror Measures

"Europe is facing an unprecedented, diverse and serious terrorist threat," Gilles de Kerchove, the bloc's counter-terrorism coordinator, told EU member governments in a report last month.

Latvian Foreign Minister Edgars Rinkevics, whose nation holds the EU's six-month revolving presidency, said Tuesday the often fractious members had reached broad consensus on what actions to take, and share the "strong will" to implement them.

But Wednesday, an EU official, briefing journalists on condition he not be identified by name or function, said work was still going on to finalize the list of recommended actions to be submitted to the leaders at the summit for their approval, AP reported.

Counter-terrorism policy shot to the top of the EU agenda following the Jan. 7-9 terror attacks in Paris against a satirical weekly, a policewoman and a kosher grocery store that claimed a total of 17 victims. The three gunmen, who proclaimed allegiance to al-Qaeda in Yemen and the Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) group, were also shot dead by French police.

The attacks stunned Europe and mobilized France and other EU countries to seek more effective ways to deal with armed Islamic militancy, especially the problem of radicalized European-born Muslims departing to fight in Syria or Iraq and returning home to sow the doctrine and techniques of holy war.

The attacks in the French capital "were a game-changer" for EU counter-terrorism policy, said Alexandra de Hoop Scheffer, senior trans-Atlantic fellow and director of the Paris office of the German Marshall Fund think tank. To prepare for Thursday's summit in Brussels, EU foreign, finance and interior and justice ministers drew up recommendations on what to do.