Clearing House (EU)
Encyclopedia
Clearing House is an obscure working group in the European Union
European Union
The European Union is an economic and political union of 27 independent member states which are located primarily in Europe. The EU traces its origins from the European Coal and Steel Community and the European Economic Community , formed by six countries in 1958...

  established after the September 11, 2001 attacks
September 11, 2001 attacks
The September 11 attacks The September 11 attacks The September 11 attacks (also referred to as September 11, September 11th or 9/119/11 is pronounced "nine eleven". The slash is not part of the pronunciation...

. It is composed of national security services
Intelligence agency
An intelligence agency is a governmental agency that is devoted to information gathering for purposes of national security and defence. Means of information gathering may include espionage, communication interception, cryptanalysis, cooperation with other institutions, and evaluation of public...

 under the Common Foreign and Security Policy
Common Foreign and Security Policy
The Common Foreign and Security Policy is the organised, agreed foreign policy of the European Union for mainly security and defence diplomacy and actions. CFSP deals only with a specific part of the EU's external relations, which domains include mainly Trade and Commercial Policy and other areas...

 who meet regularly in Brussels
Brussels
Brussels , officially the Brussels Region or Brussels-Capital Region , is the capital of Belgium and the de facto capital of the European Union...

 on counter-terrorism matters.

Its primarily roles are to agree which groups go on the EU's black list of terrorist groups and have their financial assets in the EU frozen. It does not appear on official lists and is not open to public scrutiny. All advice given by the group is not accompanied by evidence or reasoning and when put before leaders it is adopted as an "A point" (agenda item without discussion).

There are some allegations that the group is open to political manipulation with calls for greater scrutiny, however this is resisted for security reasons.

External links

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