I remain optimistic. What we've seen in Europe and the rest of the world is that freedom has a much stronger attraction than radical fundamentalism.
- Gijs de Vries Quote

If you exchange information internationally, you must strengthen data protection. Those are two sides of the same coin.
- Gijs de Vries Quote

In situations of military conflict, civil strife, lawlessness, bad governance, and human rights violations, terrorists find it easier to hide, train and prepare their attacks.
- Gijs de Vries Quote

In the fight against terrorism, national agencies keep full control over their police forces, security and intelligence agencies and judicial authorities.
- Gijs de Vries Quote

Indiscriminate attacks on civilians ought, under all circumstances, to be illegal in war as in peacetime.
- Gijs de Vries Quote

Look at Iraq; look at Afghanistan, where at great personal physical risk people have gone to the polls and have rejected the appeal from Bin Laden and his allies to stay at home.
- Gijs de Vries Quote

Police forces collect information to be used in a public court to get people convicted. Security services gather information that does not necessarily lead to people being prosecuted and in many cases needs to remain confidential.
- Gijs de Vries Quote


Terrorists have failed in what is arguably al Qaida's most important objective - to trigger revolutions.
- Gijs de Vries Quote

Terrorists have failed to trigger mass conflict between Muslims and non-Muslims in Europe. We should draw strength from that fact.
- Gijs de Vries Quote

The European Borders Agency in Warsaw has been created to help border forces in Europe cooperate more.
- Gijs de Vries Quote

The idea is to have global standards. There is so much travel that if you just had a regional standard, it would probably ultimately have to be changed.
- Gijs de Vries Quote

The violent radicals do not legitimately represent the overwhelming majority of the world's Muslims.
- Gijs de Vries Quote

There are no automatic links between poverty and terrorism. Among millions of poor people in the world, only a few turn to terrorism.
- Gijs de Vries Quote

There is a series of sectors which could be severely disrupted by terrorist attacks, particularly if they were to happen in several member states simultaneously.
- Gijs de Vries Quote

Ultimately, freedom and democracy are stronger than fear and tyranny.
- Gijs de Vries Quote

We remain vulnerable. There is no such thing as 100 percent security against terrorism.
- Gijs de Vries Quote

We still lack a global definition of terrorism.
- Gijs de Vries Quote

We're still stymied by the old stand-off between those who wish to fight terrorism and resistance fighters.
- Gijs de Vries Quote