Europe Re-Examines Extreme Right Groups After Norway Massacre

July 29, 2011

Director of Europol Rob Wainwright during a news conference in The Hague March 16, 2011 (file photo)

After last week's attack in Norway, the European Union's criminal intelligence agency Europol said it would set up a team of experts to investigate non-Islamist threats in Scandinavian countries. It said that task force may in the future stretch to a larger range of European nations.

Blanka Kolenikova, a Europe analyst at IHS Global Insight in London, says expanding the focus of security reviews may be useful.

"It can be said that maybe that there is a feel that the threat of Islamic extremism was recently in the center of the attention and maybe other forms of extremism, like this far right extremism, has slipped from the radar of the security agencies," Kolenikova said.

In a report this year Europol said there were no European right-wing terror attacks in 2010. It said extreme left wing groups carried out 45 attacks.

The overall view was that right-wing groups didn't have cohesion or public support. But it did say those on the right were increasingly active on the web.

Kolenikova says right-wing groups are becoming more professional.

"There will always be sympathizers of this ideology and some recent reports also say these far right groups are getting more sophisticated," Kolenikova added. "So yes indeed there is a level of threat that these groups could pose."