European countries agreed Thursday to begin giving extra scrutiny to travelers who meet criteria indicating they could be terrorists or Muslim foreign fighters.

The decision, taken at a meeting of EU interior ministers, was announced by Rihards Kozlovskis of Latvia, who chaired the session.

EU officials said the decision, to go into effect in June, will apply throughout the 26-nation Schengen area, to which 22 EU member states belong.

Also in the counterterrorism field, the ministers ordered the creation in July of a special unit inside Europol, the bloc's agency for police cooperation, designed to work with Internet service providers to eliminate pro-terrorist or other extremist content from websites and social media.