Gijs de Vries genoemd voor post coördinator terrorismebestrijding EU (en)

The Dutchman Gijs de Vries, former State Secretary of the Interior and former Dutch representative in the European Convention, is set to become the new EU anti-terrorism co-ordinator.

Reports indicate that the EU heads of state are likely to appoint Mr de Vries at the EU Summit in Brussels later this week.

The name of Mr de Vries, who is also a former president of the liberal ELDR group in the European Parliament, has been circulating in Brussels for a couple of days.

Last Monday, the Dutch Foreign Minister Bernard Bot confirmed to the Dutch media that the Netherlands had a candidate for the post, refusing to mention the name of the candidate.

But Mr Bot said on Monday that there were other countries which had candidates, adding that he had "highly recommended" the Dutch candidate to the EU high representative for common foreign and security policy, Javier Solana.

When appointed, Mr De Vries will be working directly under Mr Solana.

The position of counter-terrorism co-ordinator was decided upon by the EU member states as a reaction to the bomb attacks in Madrid on 11 March.

The anti-terror tsar will feed information to Europe's justice and home affairs ministers and will co-ordinate the work of the member states in combating terrorism.