European approaches to counter-radicalization vary considerably from country to country. However, the European Union has sought to create an overarching counter-radicalization structure – the EU Strategy for Combating Radicalization and Recruitment to Terrorism – within its Counter-Terrorism Strategy, which is to serve as a strategic template. Alongside these institutional efforts, an informal consensus has also emerged, with an emphasis on the attempt to work in conjunction with mainstream Muslim organizations to prevent, in particular, the radicalization of the younger generation and the veering into extremism on the part of overzealous individual converts. It is generally thought by European governments that, ideology aside, Muslim organizations and Western governments can agree that these two outcomes need to be prevented, and that Muslim organizations – nongovernmental organizations (NGOs), mosques, community associations, and the like – are best positioned to notice any radical activity early on.

Supporting Muslim NGOs that have, in the view of European governments, sufficient credibility within the Muslim community to mitigate the risk of radicalization and that, or so they hope, can be trusted also accommodates the difficulty otherwise faced by secular Western governments in directly addressing the religious and ideological components of Islamist radicalization.

The perhaps more fully articulated European counter-radicalization approach is the Prevent component in the British government’s counterterrorism strategy, the Central Counter-Terrorism Strategy (CONTEST). The strategy consists of four components – Prevent (preventing terrorism by addressing the factors that produce radicalization), Pursue (pursuing terrorists and their sponsors), Protect (protecting the British public and government), and Prepare (preparing for the consequences of a terrorist attack). Initially, CONTEST’s emphasis was on the last three Ps.