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Acknowledgements vii
v
vi Contents
Index 244
Acknowledgements
vii
Contributors
viii
Notes on Contributors ix
Carlos Ortiz is the author of Private Armed Forces and Global Security:
A Guide to the Issues and the chief editor of PrivateMilitary.org. His
research focuses on the history of private military actors, as well as the
recent evolution of the public managerial strategies encouraging their
formal use. He was awarded a doctoral degree by the University of Sussex
for this research and was a visiting research fellow at the Centre for
Global Political Economy at the same university until 2010.
In March 2012, three French soldiers and four Jewish members of the
public were killed in a series of gun attacks in the Midi-Pyrénées region
of France. The perpetrator of these terrorist attacks, Mohamed Merah,
was eventually killed during an armed siege. The official investiga-
tion revealed that he had become radicalised while in prison and had
also travelled to Afghanistan and Pakistan (BBC News, 2012a). How-
ever, Islamist terrorism is not the only type of terrorism with which
European countries have to contend. On 22 July 2011, Anders Breivik
set off a car bomb in Oslo, which resulted in eight deaths. He subse-
quently carried out a mass shooting at a Labour Party youth camp on
the island of Utøya, killing another 69 people, mostly teenagers. During
his trial, he described his actions as ‘preventive attacks to defend the
indigenous Norwegian people’ and accused the ruling Labour Party of
turning Norway into what he called a ‘multiculturalist hell’ by allowing
too many Muslim immigrants to enter the country (Guardian, 2012).
Thus, and although some signs of ‘counter-terrorism fatigue’ are visi-
ble in Europe according to the European Union (EU) Counter-Terrorism
Coordinator (Council of the European Union, 2009, p. 2), the threat
of terrorist attacks in European countries can be viewed as significant,
diverse and fast evolving, as notably confirmed by the annual EU Ter-
rorism Situation and Trend Reports compiled by Europol (see Europol,
2011) and the regular updates and discussion papers relating to the EU
Counter-Terrorism Strategy issued by the Counter-terrorism Coordina-
tor (see Council of the European Union, 2011a–c, 2012). Against this
1
2 Introduction
not spell the end of Al Qaeda, whose affiliates notably in the Sahel
region and in Yemen have considerably grown in recent years. For this
reason, terrorism inspired by Al Qaeda still tends to be considered the
most important terrorist threat faced by Europe. This is notably because
Al Qaeda propaganda can inspire ‘self-radicalising’ individuals, who may
also have opportunities to travel to training camps in conflict areas,
as shown by the case of Mohamed Merah (BBC News, 2012b). Never-
theless, Al Qaeda does not have a monopoly on the terrorist threat in
Europe, as shown by Breivik’s attacks in summer 2011 and the contin-
ued terrorist campaigns of some ethno-nationalist groups in several EU
Member States (Europol, 2011).
branded this policy a ‘paper tiger’, has argued that the EU’s activities
have only generated little added value to the activities of the Member
States (Bures, 2006, 2011). In his contribution to this volume, he devel-
ops this argument in relation to the role of Europol in counter-terrorism.
Others, such as Bossong and Coolsaet (Bossong, 2008; Coolsaet, 2010),
have argued that the development of the EU counter-terrorism pol-
icy has been haphazard and characterised by a lack of overall strategic
vision – a criticism sometimes levelled at EU internal security policies
more broadly (Kaunert et al., 2012b). In contrast, other scholars have
been more positive and have emphasised all the progress already accom-
plished since 9/11 in enhancing cooperation in this very sensitive policy
area (Mahncke and Monar, 2006; Spence, 2007; Argomaniz, 2009, 2011;
Kaunert, 2010). The very swift adoption of the European Arrest War-
rant in the aftermath of 9/11 (Kaunert, 2007) and the signing of a
range of international agreements, most notably with the US (Kaunert
and Léonard, 2011), are of particular note. Although the content of
these measures has been criticised in some respects (Ripoll Servent and
MacKenzie, 2011; Kaunert et al., 2012a), their very existence signals
that significant progress, even if it has been uneven over the years
(Argomaniz, 2009), has been accomplished in fostering cooperation on
counter-terrorism among the EU Member States. A closer examination
of the successes of the EU in this policy area, as well as the challenges
that it continues to face, is therefore in order a little more than a decade
after EU cooperation on terrorism began in earnest.
References
Argomaniz, J. (2009) ‘Post-9/11 Institutionalisation of European Union
Counterterrorism: Emergence, Acceleration and Inertia’, European Security,
18(2), 151–172.
Argomaniz, J. (2011) The EU and Counter-terrorism: Politics, Polity and Policies after
9/11 (London: Routledge).
BBC News (2012a) ‘Obituary: Toulouse Gunman Mohamed Merah’, 22 March
2012.
BBC News (2012b) ‘Did France Ignore the Islamic Radical Threat?’, 22 March
2012.
Bossong, R. (2008) ‘The Action Plan on Combating Terrorism: A Flawed Instru-
ment of EU Security Governance’, Journal of Common Market Studies, 46(1),
27–48.
Bossong, R. (2012) The Evolution of EU Counter-Terrorism: European Security Policy
after 9/11 (London: Routledge).
Bures, O. (2006) ‘EU Counter-Terrorism Policy: A “Paper Tiger?” ’, Terrorism and
Political Violence, 18(1), 57–78.
Bures, O. (2011) EU Counterterrorism Policy: A Paper Tiger? (Farnham: Ashgate).
Coolsaet, R. (2010) ‘EU Counterterrorism Strategy: Value Added or Chimera?’,
International Affairs, 86(4), 857–873.
Cottey, A. (2007) Security in the New Europe (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan).
Introduction 13
This chapter partially draws upon an article published in Cooperation and Conflict,
volume 47, issue 3, in 2012.
17
18 The European Union as a Security Actor
The main focus of this chapter is to set the framework for a comprehen-
sive approach to studying the EU’s international security policy. This
includes incorporating ‘new’ security problems into the analysis, con-
sidering their growing importance on the contemporary international
security agenda. However, the empirical developments in EU policy
towards a holistic view of security do not take place in a political vac-
uum. Notably, other international organisations have also taken steps to
re-evaluate their approach and understanding of security. This section
takes a look at the UN, constituting the most important global institu-
tion, and NATO, representing a key regional organisation. Both of these
institutions were established in the early years of the Cold War, but for
very different purposes. Whereas the aim of the UN was to maintain the
principle of sovereignty through bringing states together, NATO con-
tributed to the institutionalisation of the West–East division. In spite
of these different roles, both organisations have international security
at the core of their agenda. This section briefly examines how both
organisations have taken steps to redefine their approach to security,
notably by acknowledging the importance of non-traditional security
problems. This exercise is important because the way in which the UN
and NATO define security inevitably influences the EU’s own approach,
not least because of the largely overlapping memberships in these
organisations.
[the] concept of security has for too long been interpreted narrowly:
as security of territory from external aggression, or as protection of
26 The European Union as a Security Actor
Risks to Allied security are less likely to result from calculated aggres-
sion against the territory of the Allies, but rather from the adverse
consequences of instabilities that may arise from the serious eco-
nomic, social and political difficulties, including ethnic rivalries and
territorial disputes.
(NATO, 1991)
the roles of NATO beyond its traditional defence purpose. While main-
taining the commitment to mutual defence, NATO members have also
recognised the importance of ‘cooperative security’, which means that
‘[t]he Alliance will engage actively to enhance international security,
through partnership with relevant countries and other international
organisations; by contributing actively to arms control, nonproliferation
and disarmament’ (NATO, 2010).
One of NATO’s new roles has become crisis management in the case
of major natural disasters. In 1998, the Euro-Atlantic Partnership Coun-
cil established a new body within NATO: the Euro-Atlantic Response
Coordination Centre, which mainly aims ‘to coordinate the response of
NATO and partner countries to natural or man-made disasters within
the Euro-Atlantic area’. In 2005, in response to US requests, NATO coor-
dinated help efforts for the victims of the hurricane Katrina. At that
time, 27 countries provided some form of aid; NATO was responsible for
coordinating this assistance, together with the US Federal Emergency
Management Agency. NATO also played an important role in providing
assistance for the victims of an earthquake in Pakistan in 2005, where
80,000 died. The role of the Pact was mainly to airlift the assistance,
such as tents and blankets, provided by NATO members and third coun-
tries. It also included deploying specialists, such as engineers, to assist
the reconstruction of the state facilities.
NATO’s inroads into crisis management are correlated with increas-
ing concerns over environmental security, including climate change.
In 2004, NATO joined the multi-institutional Environment and Secu-
rity Initiative (ENVSEC), contributing to projects in vulnerable regions.
This ‘environmental security’ dimension of NATO’s security agenda
was further strengthened by the NATO Security Science Forum on
Environmental Security in 2008 – a major conference that gathered
environmental security experts from across institutions. Considering
NATO’s ambition to remain relevant, the organisation will continue
its efforts to best capture empirical developments concerning evolv-
ing security dynamics. This, in turn, is likely to affect the approach to
security of other organisations with security ambitions, such as the EU.
Biscop (2009) argues that the ESS and the Report on the Implementation
of the ESS provide only a partial strategy. These documents set guidelines
for the EU’s international conduct, underlining the preventive, holistic
and multilateral character of the EU’s action, but they do not explain
The European Union and International Security 31
what exactly the EU should do. This lack of clearly specified objectives
and priorities, according to Biscop, is particularly problematic in the
wake of the Lisbon Treaty institutional reforms, NATO’s new Strategic
Concept and the growing political role of the BRIC countries (Brazil,
Russia, India and China) (Biscop, 2009, p. 3). Howorth (2010) seconds
these concerns, arguing that ‘the EU should adopt a more calculated
strategic approach and begin at long last to think in terms of “large
goals” ’ (Howorth, 2010, p. 464). Only then, Howorth argues, can the EU
make the best use of the wide range of crisis management instruments
that it has at its disposal.
Notably, the EU is able to draw on a vast array of resources when
addressing, for example, organised crime and terrorism, including mar-
itime piracy. However, even though the EU presents its political and
economic efforts in Somalia as part of its ‘comprehensive approach’,
listing them together with EUNAVFOR ‘Atalanta’, these longer-term
measures do not serve explicitly the purpose of countering piracy.
Instead, they are largely part of the EU’s pre-programmed development
policies in Somalia, as well as its multilateral policy aiming to strengthen
the Transitional Federal Government. A ‘grand strategy’ or ‘strategic
vision’, in this case, could contribute to a clearer identification of the
set of relevant policies that the EU deploys in specific security situations.
This would prevent an impression of ‘randomness’ in the international
security policy of the EU.
The second obstacle hindering a more systematic inclusion of non-
CSDP instruments and policies into the analysis of the EU as an inter-
national security actor concerns the traditional problem of institutional
and horizontal inconsistency – a challenge closely related to the one dis-
cussed above. In Nuttall’s categorisation, horizontal consistency entails
that different EU policies are aligned and support each other (Nuttall,
2005). Institutional consistency, on the other hand, has traditionally
concerned the degree to which the Council and the Commission have
been coordinating their policies and supporting each other’s actions.
The Lisbon Treaty introduces important changes in this respect, which
are further discussed in this section.
The problem of ensuring inter-pillar consistency in the interna-
tional security policy of the EU has attracted significant scholarly
attention, and rightly so (Tietje, 1997; Missiroli, 2001, 2010; Dijkstra,
2009; Van Elsuwege, 2010; Zwolski, 2011). The growing profile of the
European Commission in international relations, particularly through
its Directorate General for External Relations (DG Relex), has coin-
cided with the increasing international role of the Council, including
32 The European Union as a Security Actor
its Secretariat. Notably, the Council Secretariat has been steadily growing
in quantitative (number of officials) and qualitative (number of policies)
terms (Hayes-Renshaw and Wallace, 2006, p. 101), thus increasing the
risk of overlapping competences between the first and second pillars of
the EU.
The Lisbon Treaty addressed this very problem, potentially making it
easier (even more intuitive) to analyse the international security pol-
icy of the EU in a holistic manner. On the personal level, it merged
the post of the High Representative with that of the Vice-President of
the European Commission, in order to ‘ensure the consistency of the
Union’s external action’ (Council of the European Union, 2008d, p. 35).
On the bureaucratic level, the Lisbon Treaty provided for the establish-
ment of the EEAS, which brings together DG Relex and the part of the
Council Secretariat that is responsible for foreign and security policy.
The EEAS, which also includes Member States’ representatives, assists
the High Representative.
These and other reforms not only provide an opportunity for a more
consistent EU international security policy, but also create a new set of
challenges. On the personal level, the new permanent President of the
European Council is entrusted with ensuring ‘the external representa-
tion of the Union on issues concerning its common foreign and security
policy’, as laid down by Article 15 of the Treaty of Lisbon. Depending
on personalities, the perception of interests and the interpretation of the
EU law, this can lead to tensions with the High Representative. On the
bureaucratic level, the EEAS consists of three different bodies with dif-
ferent institutional cultures. It will become fully effective only when
old institutional loyalties are replaced with a new ethos (Whitman,
2011, p. 12).
The under-developed strategic vision, together with the difficult task
of assuring consistency in the EU’s external action, has been to a large
extent preventing a comprehensive approach to studying the EU’s inter-
national security policy. However, regardless of the pace of the progress
in these areas, this book argues that it is important to incorporate the
analysis of all the relevant policies and instruments when assessing the
EU’s role in international security.
Of course, a more assertive strategic vision for the EU is in order, not
least to supplement the institutional reforms instigated by the Lisbon
Treaty and to make a better use of the diversity of resources in the
EU’s security apparatus. Yet, as Toje convincingly argues, the lack of ‘big
thinking’ in the EU can be better understood if the Union is conceptu-
alised as a small power. This approach can indeed serve as ‘the best path
The European Union and International Security 33
Conclusion
This chapter has put forward two arguments. First, it has emphasised
the importance of adopting a comprehensive approach to studying the
role of the EU in international security. Traditional security threats and
the CSDP are rightly at the core of the research agenda; yet, as the con-
tributors to this volume demonstrate, the contemporary security agenda
has become complex and the EU possesses a wide range of instruments
capable of tackling these problems in the short-to-long term. These
include not only CSDP civilian and military capacities, but also reg-
ulatory measures within the framework of Justice and Home Affairs.
Only this more encompassing approach offers an opportunity to bet-
ter understand the complex nature of the EU’s role in international
security.
However, as this chapter has also demonstrated, adopting such a holis-
tic view is not a straightforward exercise. There are challenges, including
(a) difficulties in delimiting the security policies from the non-security
policies of the EU, due to the contested nature of the security con-
cept; (b) different perceptions of security among Member States, even
if there is an agreement on security strategies at the EU level; (c) the
lack of an overarching ‘grand strategy’ or a ‘strategic vision’, which
would help to make a better use of the diversity of security instru-
ments at the EU’s disposal; and (d) a connected challenge of assuring
consistency in developing and conducting the EU’s international secu-
rity policy. These challenges have been systematically addressed in this
chapter, with the caveat that, although it is conceptually and method-
ologically difficult to address EU security policy in a comprehensive
manner, this must not discourage scholars from attempting such a
holistic analysis.
Recent developments in the literature suggest that scholars increas-
ingly adopt a more encompassing view of the EU’s international security
34 The European Union as a Security Actor
role. There are a few important reasons for such a change. First, the
international security agenda continues to evolve, with scholars, experts
and policy practitioners increasingly recognising the complexity and
interconnectedness of traditional and more recent security problems.
These empirical developments have long been recognised by Secu-
rity Studies experts and cannot be ignored when assessing the role of
the EU as a security actor. Second, the EU itself continuously rede-
fines its approach to security, increasingly recognising the importance
of non-traditional security problems. This trend can be observed in
the two consecutive Security Strategy documents of 2003 and 2008.
Third, the institutional reforms introduced by the Lisbon Treaty fur-
ther symbolise a growing understanding in the EU that development
and security policies are often interlinked. For example, the establish-
ment and the composition of the EEAS indicate that the old pillar
structure has become obsolete in tackling contemporary problems on
the political and security agenda of the EU. Although policy substance
may be slower to adapt, institutional structures have been set to make
a better use of the variety of policies and instruments at the EU’s
disposal.
Notes
1. The concept of societal security was developed by the so-called ‘Copenhagen
School’ of security in the seminal book by Wæver et al. (1993) entitled Identity,
Migration and the New Security Agenda in Europe. This chapter does not aim to
engage with the broad spectrum of approaches to security as they have devel-
oped over the last 20 years. Instead, it suggests that the EU has particularly
promoted the concept of human security in its official narrative (Martin and
Kaldor, 2010). Furthermore, this chapter suggests that, although there are dif-
ferences between different security approaches, there is an almost universal
understanding among security scholars and experts that security entails more
than traditional military threats.
2. For Ekengren’s recommendations concerning the EU’s disaster response, see
his 2011 presentation before the European Parliament on ‘New Challenges for
EU Disaster Response’, http://www.societalsecurity.eu, accessed on 8 August
2011.
3. Research interview with an official from the General Secretariat of the Council
of the European Union, June 2009.
4. Research interview with an official from the Permanent Representation of one
of the CEE states in Brussels, June 2009.
5. See also the Special Issue on Irondelle, B., Bickerton, C.J. and Menon, A. (eds)
(2011) ‘Security Cooperation beyond the Nation State: The EU’s Common
Security and Defence Policy’ in Journal of Common Market Studies, volume 49,
issue 1, pp. 1–190.
The European Union and International Security 35
References
Annan, K. (2005) ‘ “In Larger Freedom”: Decision Time at the UN’, Foreign Affairs,
84(3), 63–74.
Anthony, I. (2004) ‘Reducing Threats at the Source: A European Perspective on
Cooperative Threat Reduction’, SIPRI Research Report no 19 (Oxford: Oxford
University Press).
Bagoyoko, N. and Gibert, M.V. (2009) ‘The Linkage between Security, Gover-
nance and Development: The European Union in Africa’, Journal of Development
Studies, 45(5), 789–814.
Bailes, A.J. (2008) ‘The EU and a “Better World”: What Role for the European
Security and Defence Policy?’, International Affairs, 84(1), 115–130.
Barnett, J. (2003) ‘Security and Climate Change’, Global Environmental Change,
13(1), 7–17.
Beer, A. (2006) ‘Final Report. Conference on Greening Foreign and Security
Policy: The Role of Europe’, 6 and 7 December 2006, European Parliament,
Brussels.
Biscop, S. (2008) ‘The European Security Strategy in Context: A Comprehensive
Trend’, in Biscop, S. and Andersson, J.J. (eds) The EU and the European Security
Strategy: Forging a Global Europe (London: Routledge), 5–20.
Biscop, S. (2009) ‘The Value of Power, the Power of Values: A Call for an EU Grand
Strategy’, Egmont – The Royal Institute for International Relations, Egmont Paper
33 (Gent: Academia Press).
Boin, R.A. and Ekengren, M. (2009) ‘Preparing for the World Risk Society: Towards
a New Security Paradigm for the European Union’, Journal of Contingencies and
Crisis Management, 17(4), 285–294.
Boin, R.A., Ekengren, M. and Rhinard, M. (2008) Security in Transition: Towards
a New Paradigm for the European Union, Number B41 (Stockholm: Swedish
National Defence College).
Bretherton, C. and Vogler, J. (2006) The European Union as a Global Actor (London:
Routledge).
Britz, M. (2011) ‘The EU’s View on Security Sector Reform’, in Ekengren, M.
and Simons, G. (eds) The Politics of Security Sector Reform (Burlington: Ashgate),
81–92.
Buzan, B. and Hansen, L. (2009) The Evolution of International Security Studies
(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press).
Buzan, B., Wæver, O. and de Wilde, J. (1998) Security: A New Framework for Analysis
(Boulder: Lynne Rienner).
Collins, A. (ed.) (2007) Contemporary Security Studies (Oxford: Oxford University
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Cottey, A. (2007) Security in the New Europe (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan).
Council of the European Union (2003) ‘A Secure Europe in a Better World:
European Security Strategy’, 15895/03, 8 December 2003 (Brussels: Council of
the European Union).
Council of the European Union (2008a) ‘Report on the Implementation of the
European Security Strategy – Providing Security in a Changing World’, S407/08,
11 December 2008 (Brussels: Council of the European Union).
Council of the European Union (2008b) ‘Climate Change and Security:
Recommendations of the High Representative on Follow-up to the High
36 The European Union as a Security Actor
40
The European Union as a Comprehensive Police Actor 41
the literature (Mounier, 2008; Rees, 2008), indicating that a unified and
interconnected approach to understanding the different elements of the
EU’s security agenda is required. Secondly, this area of study can offer
valuable insights into the role played by EU police within the wider
framework of the EU’s security agenda: this cannot be done by focusing
only on isolated areas of policing as is currently the approach of the lit-
erature. Finally, the EU’s ambitions as a comprehensive security provider
and credible global security actor have been widely discussed by scholars
(Brown and Shepherd, 2007); this area of research can offer important
insights into the role of police within these ambitions. This chapter aims
to address the gap in the literature by presenting a framework for investi-
gating the EU as a comprehensive police actor. Research based upon this
framework will be used to examine the relationship/linkage between the
EU’s police comprehensiveness and its security actorness and, by doing
so, to explore the contribution of police activities to the EU’s security
agenda.
EU-level policing may be understood as including any instance of
police functions being undertaken by or in conjunction with EU insti-
tutions and agencies. For the purpose of examining the EU as a com-
prehensive police actor, it is necessary not only to identify what is
meant by the notion of an ‘actor’, but also to explain precisely what
constitutes ‘comprehensive’ policing. Once clearly defined criteria for
these concepts have been established, they can then be integrated
into a coherent and usable framework for analysis. This chapter will
be divided into three main sections; firstly, theories of actorness will
be outlined. This will be done not only in order to clarify what
is meant by the term ‘actor’, but also to understand how actorness
may be measured and assessed. The actorness criteria selected for this
research should be clearly relatable to policing if they are to be inte-
grated into a usable framework. The second section will consider what
‘police comprehensiveness’ means, focusing particularly on police func-
tions – that is, the various roles, tasks and procedures recognised in
the literature as comprising policing as a whole. This will lead to pre-
cisely defined criteria that may be used to measure and assess police
comprehensiveness. The final section of this chapter, ‘Towards a new
theoretical framework’, will then demonstrate and justify how a the-
oretical framework may be constructed by integrating the criteria for
actorness and comprehensiveness into a matrix. This will form the basis
of a nuanced and in-depth approach to researching EU-level policing.
The goal of this framework is to investigate the relationship between
the EU’s police comprehensiveness and its security actorness, and to
42 The European Union as a Security Actor
Theories of actorness
There has not been an extensive amount written about assessing the
EU’s status as an actor, and there is a lack of consensus regarding what it
means to be an actor in international relations (Jupille and Caporaso,
1998, p. 213). Neoliberal notions of international relations such as
those presented by Keohane and Nye suggest that there are numerous
types of actors, including governmental, intergovernmental and non-
governmental actors (Keohane and Nye, 1977). The multi-dimensional
nature of global politics was reflected further still by Rosenau, who pro-
posed that citizens, officials and leaders, as well as private actors, could
be considered ‘micro actors’, while states, transnational organisations,
leaderless publics and social movements may be seen as ‘macro actors’
(Rosenau, 1990, p. 119). Bretherton and Vogler claim that Rosenau’s
view is admirable for its inclusiveness, but further work is required in
order to understand how the actorness of the EU as a whole might
be assessed (Bretherton and Vogler, 1999, p. 20). Drawing from ideas
regarding European Community actorness presented by Sjöstedt (1977),
Bretherton and Vogler offer a scheme that aims to identify and mea-
sure components of actor capability, which they directly relate to the
EU. They offer the following set of five criteria indicating the basic
requirements for actorness:
These criteria are useful and insightful, particularly when applied to the
EU. For the purpose of producing a framework for examining the EU as a
comprehensive police actor, however, it is Jupille and Caporaso’s criteria
for assessing the EU’s actor capacity that will be primarily focused upon
(Jupille and Caporaso, 1998). While in many ways similar to Bretherton
The European Union as a Comprehensive Police Actor 43
and Vogler’s, the scheme presented is somewhat broader and more flex-
ible, and as such may be more easily and effectively integrated with
criteria for police comprehensiveness. The four criteria that they sug-
gest – recognition, authority, autonomy and cohesion – are designed to
be ‘observable, continuously variable, and abstract from any particular
institutional form’ (p. 216). Furthermore, they state that their crite-
ria for actorness should be ‘conceptually helpful when applied to the
EU’s global political role and to be applicable more generally in assess-
ments of other entities’ capacities to act in world politics’ (Jupille and
Caporaso, 1998, p. 216). For these reasons, Jupille and Caporaso’s cri-
teria will be particularly suitable for research in terms of assessing EU
actorness, being adapted to apply to policing and being combined with
criteria for measuring police comprehensiveness. In more detail, the four
criteria for actorness are explained below.
Recognition
Recognition by others is an essential condition for actorness. According
to Jupille and Caporaso, recognition should be seen as a ‘minimum con-
dition that adds little substantive understanding of any given entity, but
simply registers it on the analytical radar’ (Jupille and Caporaso, 1998,
p. 215). There are two categories of recognition: de jure and de facto.
De jure recognition refers to diplomatic recognition under international
law or to formal membership of international organisations. Diplomatic
recognition has traditionally been considered as an aspect of sovereign
statehood, automatically given to states. This is not always the case,
however, as examples such as Kosovo, Israel and Taiwan demonstrate
that states are not always given automatic full diplomatic recognition.
Furthermore, where the line is drawn in terms of recognition is not clear.
Kosovo is not a member of any international organisation, yet is recog-
nised by more than 50 states. The EU is not sovereign, and it is not
conferred with any kind of automatic recognition; instead, diplomatic
recognition of the EU is at the discretion of third parties.
In practice, the interactions of third states with the EU may implicitly
confer de facto recognition upon it. However, Jupille and Caporaso claim
that simply producing external effects is not sufficient to fulfil the crite-
rion of recognition; it is third parties’ engagement with the EU in order to
discuss, clarify or modify such external effects that are most significant
for recognition, not the effects themselves. In other words, it is states’
direct negations with the EU that indicate the Union’s de facto recog-
nition as an actor. According to Jupille and Caporaso, the criterion of
recognition may be considered satisfied whenever a third party interacts
with the EU itself, rather than, or in addition to, EU Member States.
44 The European Union as a Security Actor
Authority
The authority to act externally is Jupille and Caporaso’s second fac-
tor for assessing the EU’s capacity as a global actor. In particular, this
authority refers to legal competence. Jupille and Caporaso offer several
examples of areas where the EU has been given external legal authority,
including international and association agreements, and environmental
agreements. The EU’s legal competences have expanded in many areas
during the last decade, including areas related to security and policing,
such as Europol and the European Arrest Warrant (EAW) (which allows
a court of an EU Member State to issue a judicial judgement for the
arrest and surrender of a person in another Member State). In addition
to these, EU Police Missions may also be used to provide examples of
the EU being given external legal authority to act. For instance, formal
United Nations Security Council approval of a Joint Action provided the
EU with legal competence to act in the Rule of Law Mission in Kosovo.
Autonomy
According to Jupille and Caporaso, autonomy implies distinctiveness
and, to some extent, independence from other actors, especially states.
This may be best explained in terms of two factors: institutional distinc-
tiveness and independence. Institutional distinctiveness refers to having
distinctive institutional apparatus, even if these are based in or attached
to domestic political institutions. An institution’s independence from
states should make a difference compared to what would result from an
international system comprised just of self-interested state actors. Jupille
and Caporaso claim that parts of the institutional structure of the EU
with exclusive competence to act may not necessarily be directly trans-
lated as areas of Union independence. However, autonomy need not be
absolute, as an actor may be autonomous in areas; for instance, the EU
The European Union as a Comprehensive Police Actor 45
Cohesion
Cohesion is not required in order to make a difference in global politics,
that is, to have ‘presence’; for instance, the EU would still make a signif-
icant difference with regards to external consequences without policy
cohesion. For this reason, Jupille and Caporaso argue that there is a dif-
ference between ‘actor’ and ‘presence’, and that to be an actor requires
a certain minimal level of cohesion. As they point out, ‘[a] random col-
lection of elements could have external effects but would not be judged
as being an actor’ (p. 219).
The concept of cohesion, as Jupille and Caporaso present it applied
to the EU, may be divided into four dimensions: value (goal) cohesion,
tactical cohesion, procedural cohesion and output cohesion. Value cohe-
sion involves similarity or compatibility of goals. Tactical cohesion, on
the other hand, is when goals are significantly different, but can be made
to fit with each other through issue linkages. Procedural cohesion refers
to issues where there is conflict, yet some consensus exists regarding
the procedures and rules to be used. The fourth dimension of cohe-
sion that Jupille and Caporaso suggest relates to public policies: more
cohesion exists when Member States form collective policies, and this
is referred to as output cohesion. Cohesion need not be considered an
all-or-nothing criterion; it is possible for an actor to demonstrate very
high levels of cohesion in some areas and less in others.
In terms of EU-level policing, these four areas of cohesion may be
explored by considering EU policy and legislation. Policy documents
regarding policing will provide indication of goals, while legislation will
be useful for identifying output cohesion: for example, legislation on the
EAW demonstrates output cohesion. EU-level police activities involving
contributions from many Member States, such as the EU Police Missions,
also provide evidence of output cohesion. Certain examples of EU police
activities, such as Police Missions and Europol, relate to several or all of
the criteria for actorness. This makes them ideal as cases for analysis.
Criteria for actorness are not absolute: they may be fulfilled in particular
areas or to degrees. For this reason, actorness may be measured both in
46 The European Union as a Security Actor
terms of quality and quantity; that is, the number of instances where
criteria for actorness are met and also the depth to which they are met.
As previously noted, Jupille and Caporaso’s approach is flexible and
can be generally applied in assessing actorness. It is already designed
with the EU in mind and may easily be adapted to focus more specif-
ically on EU policing. As they stand, however, Jupille and Caporaso’s
criteria for actorness are not adequate for assessing the EU as a compre-
hensive police actor because they cannot incorporate the dimension of
police comprehensiveness. The broad nature of Jupille and Caporaso’s
approach will need to be adapted in such a way that police comprehen-
siveness can be assessed alongside actorness in an integrated fashion.
In order to achieve this, it will be necessary to systematically examine
the functions, roles and tasks of police, and then reduce them into a
small number of clearly defined criteria that may be used to indicate
police comprehensiveness. The criteria for both actorness and police
comprehensiveness may then be combined into a single framework.
This is important, because it is by exploring not only the EU’s police
comprehensiveness and its actorness but also the relationship or link-
age between these two areas that the contribution of police to the EU’s
security agenda may be assessed.
The following section of this chapter will give an overview of police
functions and explain how criteria for police comprehensiveness may be
produced. A final section will then consider how theoretical approaches
to actorness and police comprehensiveness may be integrated into
a coherent and usable framework, and how this framework may be
applied for research.
Police functions
is this set that will be used here, although many other authors’ work
will then be incorporated in order to elaborate on different aspects of
policing. According to the classic ideal set presented by Goldstein, the
functions of police are as follows:
Roles
Bittner draws attention to the ‘roles’ or essential characteristics of polic-
ing (Bittner, 1970). Roles may be thought of as conceptually ‘what police
do’, or what they are essentially supposed to achieve. In particular,
48 The European Union as a Security Actor
Policing tasks
The following sections will outline the range of tasks that police per-
form. These tasks will then be related back to Goldstein’s ideal set of
functions, and this will provide the basis for producing criteria for police
comprehensiveness.
Crime-fighting tasks
Fighting crime is one of the most central aspects of police work, and
many policing tasks in some way relate to dealing with convictable
violations of law (Loveday, 1996). Indeed, dealing with crime may
be said to be the original raison d’être of policing (Edwards, 2005).
Crime fighting involves the prevention or reduction of crime, as well
as the detection and investigation of crimes that have been committed.
Edwards suggests that crime may be seen as ranging from large-scale
crime, such as organised crime, drug trafficking, terrorism and serious
fraud, to personal crime involving individuals, such as domestic vio-
lence or murder, and minor or street crime including muggings and
vandalism (Edwards, 2005). Crime prevention and reduction concerns
those measures taken by police that are designed to stop crimes from
occurring.
There are a number of broad approaches used for the prevention or
reduction of crime. Some of these are situational – that is, tailored for
particular places and circumstances. Examples of this are community-
based programmes, such as police-led drug education programmes, or
50 The European Union as a Security Actor
and evidence against them. In order that they may perform these tasks,
police are granted the power to arrest, detain and question (interrogate)
suspects. This is an area in which the EU police institutions and Mem-
ber States’ law enforcement agencies cooperate: while EU institutions
such as Europol do not themselves have powers of arrest, they facilitate
the sharing of intelligence and evidence which may be used by Member
States’ police to make arrests. Additionally, the EAW is an example of
EU-level policing legislation that directly relates to powers of arrest.
Order-maintenance tasks
Order maintenance essentially refers to the non-arrest part of police
work. The aspect of order maintenance that has received by far the
most attention in academic literature is ‘policing public order’. Unlike
crime fighting, precisely what is meant by policing public order is
unclear. Waddington points out that the phrase evokes images of riot-
clad officers engaged in forceful conflict with political dissents engaged
in community disorders, but that this is usually far from the case
(Waddington, 1996, 2003). Protests and picketing are most often policed
by officers in normal uniforms, with little violence and few arrests. Fur-
thermore, eruptions of violence requiring forceful suppression by police
occur in many situations, from sports matches to street carnivals. Nor
can policing public order be defined by the deployment of officers en
masse, because such collective police action also occurs in other cir-
cumstances, such as in cases of civil disaster (Hills, 1997). Waddington
suggests that due to the ambiguity of policing public order, it is useful to
focus on certain aspects, in particular ‘contentious politics’ when they
are pursued through protest and related activity (Waddington, 2003,
p. 187). The techniques that police may use to suppress political con-
tention are varied, ranging from benign symbolic presence to aggressive
paramilitary responses to disorder. The use of visored helmets, body
armour, flame-retardant overalls, shields and batons may be seen as a
way to protect police from injury while engaged in work that is intrinsi-
cally dangerous. However, the increased use of firearms and low-lethality
weapons, such as counter-strike sprays, has contributed to accusations
that police are becoming more paramilitary (Rappart, 2003).
The police also perform order-maintenance tasks during times of
emergency, such as in cases of large-scale accidents, terrorist attacks or
natural disasters. Emergency management coordination tasks primarily
involve working alongside other emergency services, as different agen-
cies will have primary responsibility for dealing with different types of
emergencies; for example, the fire service for fire, or the rail board for
The European Union as a Comprehensive Police Actor 53
Service tasks
Aside from police work that is related to order maintenance, crime
or arrests, police also provide service tasks to the public. According
to Walker, the functions of police in the modern state have come to
interlock closely with other services involved in the broader project of
providing for citizens’ well-being (Walker, 2003). These services include,
for example, health, social security, environmental protection and util-
ity supply. By providing 24-hour, seven day-a-week availability as well
as legal coercion, police have the authority and presence to reinforce
such services. This is because police can be proactive players in terms of
planning and coordination in both the local and central administration
of these other services. Walker points out that ‘in this sense, policing
has both shaped and been shaped by broader framework of multi-
functional, co-ordinated regulatory activity we call government and the
general container of government power we call the state’ (Walker, 2003,
p. 113).
Police provide a number of other day-to-day services to the pub-
lic. These include providing directions, general information and advice
54 The European Union as a Security Actor
The following section will explain how the functions of police may
be reduced to three analytical criteria without sacrificing the details
and quality contained in the full ideal set. Firstly, each of the police
tasks that have been outlined in this chapter may be identified with
a function from the set. Each of these functions may in turn be
grouped under three broad criteria for assessing comprehensiveness:
crime fighting, order maintenance and service. Some functions may
fit more than one criterion, but the tasks within that function will
be different in each criterion’s case. This will be demonstrated and
explained in further detail below. The way in which the criteria relate
to police functions and tasks can be explained most clearly by con-
sidering each one in turn. The following is a list of police functions
grouped with each criterion and a brief summary of the tasks associated
with each based on the more detailed descriptions already given in this
chapter.
Crime fighting
Function: To prevent and control conduct widely recognised as threat-
ening to life and property (serious crime).
Tasks: This involves all police tasks related to the prevention or reduc-
tion of all types of crime; the detection and investigation of crimes
that have been committed; and the apprehension, detention and
charging of suspects.
Function: To resolve conflict, whether it be between individuals,
groups of individuals, or individuals and their government.
Tasks: Relates to crime fighting when conflicts involve illegal activity,
such as violence, threat of violence, or causing serious or dangerous
public disorder.
56 The European Union as a Security Actor
Order maintenance
Function: To prevent and control conduct widely recognised as threat-
ening to life and property (serious crime).
Tasks: Negotiation management and policing public order at protests
and marches, as well as other types of public gatherings such as
sports matches, carnivals and so on.
Function: To aid individuals who are in danger of physical harm, such
as the victims of violent attack.
Tasks: To coordinate and work alongside other emergency services
during times of emergency, such as when large-scale accidents,
terrorist attacks or natural disasters occur.
Function: To facilitate the movement of people and vehicles.
Tasks: To ensure public safety in areas where there is a high volume
of vehicle congestion, areas where vehicles travel at high speed,
or when traffic signs and signals are not functioning; to observe
whether people operating vehicles are doing so in a safe manner
and in accordance with the law; and to monitor and facilitate the
safe movement of pedestrians at large gatherings. This also includes
police tasks relating to border control.
Function: To assist those who cannot care for themselves: the intoxi-
cated, the addicted, the mentally ill, the physically disabled, the old
and the young.
Tasks: To detain or get help for those who may present a danger to
themselves or others, and to take appropriate subsequent action,
such as offering advice, referring an individual to a specialist or
charging an individual if the law has been broken.
Function: To resolve conflict, whether it be between individuals,
groups of individuals or individuals and their government.
Tasks: To negotiate, take actions to ‘keep the peace’ when serious con-
flict occurs between individuals and to perform negotiation man-
agement and public-order-policing tasks when conflicts between
large groups or groups and their government occur.
Function: To create and maintain a feeling of security in communities.
Tasks: In accordance with the ‘reassurance agenda’ police should
create a sense of security in society though the symbolic presence
The European Union as a Comprehensive Police Actor 57
Service
Functions: To aid individuals who are in danger of physical harm, such
as the victims of violent attack, and to assist those who cannot care
for themselves: the intoxicated, the addicted, the mentally ill, the
physically disabled, the old and the young.
Tasks: These tasks relate to providing for citizens’ well-being. Police
should assist those who have been physically harmed, or are in dan-
ger of harm, and coordinate with other specialists and emergency
services for the protection of citizens. Police are often expected
to provide twenty-four-hour, seven day-a-week availability to help
with citizens’ general needs. Additionally, the notion of police
assisting those who need help may also be extended to include ser-
vice tasks, such as the provision of directions, general information
and advice. Police service tasks may also include planning and coor-
dination involvement with health, social security, environmental
protection and utility supply.
Function: To protect constitutional guarantees, such as the right of free
speech and assembly.
Tasks: To advise and assist citizens planning to hold lawful public
protests, gatherings or other events.
For the purposes of this research, if police perform tasks that can be
identified as belonging to a particular function, and those tasks are
performed to a similar depth and quality as would be expected of com-
parable domestic or international police, then that function may be
considered fulfilled. Each criterion for comprehensiveness may be con-
sidered to be fully met only if all of the functions that comprise them
are fulfilled. The foundational ‘roles’ of policing may also be related to
these criteria. Police roles are very broad in nature, and as such may
be applied in some way to a large percentage of police functions and
tasks. For this reason, the extent to which police fulfil the essential roles
of policing may be judged by the extent to which they meet all three
criteria for comprehensiveness.
Police comprehensiveness is to be measured both in terms of quan-
tity, that is, the number of roles, functions and tasks that occur in
EU-level policing, and quality, that is, the depth of the function or
task that is carried out. This is because quantity alone may not be a
sufficient basis to claim that the EU is a comprehensive and credible
police actor. Rather, the criteria for police comprehensiveness must be
58 The European Union as a Security Actor
Conclusion
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The European Union as a Comprehensive Police Actor 61
65
66 Counter-terrorism and Policing in Europe
The issue of data protection is always our main hurdle to take but we
are aware of it and we are very happy that the data protection regime
is there because we cannot do without it. It is a safeguard for both
the EU and citizens that we are not playing or fooling around with
information.
(Interview with a Europol official, September 2009)
over the fact that their Spanish counterparts refused to share informa-
tion on the types of explosives that had been used. These examples
confirm that, even in the spring of 2004, Europol continued to be more
of a coordination office than operational headquarters.
In the area of counter-terrorism, however, even coordination has
proven to be a difficult task. In part, this is because the political,
administrative and judicial framework varies from one Member State
to another, which adds further impediments to effective information-
sharing and coordination.3 Moreover, according to a report by the
European Commission, free circulation of information is hindered by
two additional obstacles:
close interaction with the Egmont Group, which is yet another infor-
mal multilateral group created in 1995, comprising the authorities from
the Financial Intelligence Units of 104 countries (Den Boer et al., 2008,
p. 118). The long history of these non-EU networks indicates that coop-
eration between intelligence services has always been a high priority for
the EU Member States, even though they have been hesitant to integrate
their intelligence services into an EU framework.
Another interviewed EU official stated that ‘the more venues for dis-
cussion and personal communication there are, the better for EU
80 Counter-terrorism and Policing in Europe
[t]o say to what extent they find it annoying that these groups exist
and seem to divide things among themselves. But from the point of
view of the actual working of the EU and its institutions, clearly if
a significant group of Member States with a significant stake in the
issue manages to come to a conclusion, in the end this should make
it easier to have an arrangement taken across the EU.
(Interview with an anonymous EU official, October 2008)
and formal organisations such as Europol. They also warned that the
persisting preference for informal horizontal cooperation via non-EU
counter-terrorism networks is fraud with numerous risks:
Various authors have indeed already pointed out that most measures
adopted after 9/11 in the context of the Action Plan represent multi-
use legislation in relation to fighting crime, which previously failed to
gather sufficient support among publics and parliamentarians in the
EU Member States (Edwards and Meyer, 2008, p. 18; Bossong, 2008a,
p. 36). This is all the more problematic given the fact that the first EU
Counter-terrorism Action Plan had been developed very rapidly with-
out undergoing the necessary consultation process with all ratifying or
implementing actors at lower political levels. Thus, according to Raphael
Bossong, ‘policy conflict predictably arose later and undermined trust in
the EU’s counter-terrorism effort’ and it is not too surprising that several
EU Member States and different professional networks ‘did not feel too
strictly bound by the EU counter-terrorism framework, but cultivated
their own bilateral relationships or made use of other informal groups’
(Bossong, 2008a, pp. 39–40). The problem is that this only aggravated
long-standing co-ordination, competence and accountability problems
in this ‘crowded policy space’ (Bossong, 2008a, p. 40). Furthermore, due
to their highly secretive character, informal non-EU counter-terrorism
networks did not lead to greater inclusion of civil society actors as is
usually the case in policy-networks on issues such as the environment,
trade or education (Peterson and Bomberg, 1999).
From an analytical point of view, the nature of informal bi- and multi-
lateral arrangements also makes it difficult to capture any best practices.
While two (or more) Member States may have an apparently close rela-
tionship, their model of cooperation may actually be quite ineffective
(John Howell & Co., 2007, p. 36). Similarly, although the available lit-
erature provides numerous accounts mapping the proliferation of the
82 Counter-terrorism and Policing in Europe
Others have also noted that while not formally lacking membership,
‘we [at Europol] have 99 per cent of these arrangements on our radar
and we are somehow involved’. According to one interviewed Europol
official, this promotes awareness, which is one of the important tasks of
Europol: ‘If I meet a colleague in Germany and he asks me “How was
your weekend in Brussels?”, then I have not fulfilled my task because
a local police officer does not even know where Europol has its seat’
(Interview with a Europol official, September 2009).
Some practitioners and experts from the academia have, however,
expressed the opposite view. The Chair of the Counter-Terrorism Team
of Eurojust (Interview, September 2009), for example, acknowledged
that ‘we do not need more structures. We need to integrate existing
ones and make more intelligent use of them. There is a need for more
integrated approaches’. Similarly, Den Boer et al. (2008, p. 119) argued
that only ‘a systematic evaluation would allow us to assess whether
an (assumed) superior output legitimacy is able to compensate for the
shortcomings in terms of input legitimacy’. Unfortunately, such a com-
prehensive evaluation is beyond the scope of this chapter but the
plethora of non-EU (as well as EU) structures and mechanism involved
in the fight against terrorism clearly raises concerns about mandate and
work overlap, repetition and duplication. Most Member States, more-
over, tend to send the same experts to both EU and non-EU bodies
(e.g. to Club of Bern’s CTG and SitCen, or to PWGT and Europol), ‘thus
raising interesting questions over intelligence ownership’ (Argomaniz,
2008, p. 196).
Another important weakness lies in management and use of
bilaterally exchanged information. Firstly, because many bilateral
Europol’s Counter-terrorism Role 83
It was primarily for political reasons that terrorism was originally not
included in Europol’s agenda and full consensus has not yet emerged on
the role and future of Europol. While some Member States, including
Austria, Belgium and the Netherlands, would like to see Europol evolve
into an organisation with an independent investigative role, such as
the American FBI, others, including the Germany, France, Italy, Spain
and the UK, oppose such evolution, preferring instead to keep inves-
tigative authority at the national level with Europol as a coordinating
body (Bensahel, 2003, p. 40; Zimmermann, 2006, p. 135).
On the one hand, disputes like this indicate that at least for some
Member States, it may still be too early to allow the EU to have an influ-
ential role in traditionally state-specific areas such as policing, criminal
justice and intelligence gathering. On the other hand, after more than
two years of deliberations, the Council approved a Decision that turned
Europol into ‘an entity of the Union’ as of 1 January 2010 (Council
of the European Union, 2009). This means that its funding is now pro-
vided from the EU budget and EC staff regulations apply to Europol staff.
The Decision also expanded Europol’s competence from the ‘organised
Europol’s Counter-terrorism Role 89
On one hand, the move from the Convention to a Council Decision sig-
nifies the partial ‘communautarisation’ of Europol and the further move
away from a purely ‘intergovernmental’ concept of this body. Moreover,
although on paper Europol still does not have any executive powers, in
practice it may increasingly be seen as ‘operational’ because the 2009
Decision grants it the power to request national authorities, to initiate
or coordinate criminal investigations and to participate in JITs. Thus,
according to Mitsilegas, ‘Europol officers may operate in the territory of
a Member State. In this context, the line between assisting and operat-
ing may become rather blurred’ (Mitsilegas, 2009, p. 552). On the other
hand, the same author has also argued that the incremental increase of
Europol’s powers and the introduction of some communautaire elements
90 Counter-terrorism and Policing in Europe
The fight against terrorism is and will remain, primarily the respon-
sibility of national authorities. [. . .] Police forces, intelligence agen-
cies, the judiciary, customs officers and other officials all remain
instruments of national governments, under the control of national
parliaments. The EU’s role is to support these national authorities,
not to replace them or to duplicate their work.
Acknowledgement
Notes
1. Some analysts have, nonetheless, argued that, with the expected adoption
of the recent proposals by the Commission and the Council, Europol will
be much closer to becoming a form of ‘real’ federal police force, with
independent investigative and operational powers (see Peers, 2007).
2. In 2007, Europol had a staff of about 530 and a budget of 68 million.
In comparison to the FBI’s almost 30,000 employees and $3 billion annual
budget, Europol remains miniscule. In contrast, Ben Hayes recently argued
that Europol is ‘now a well-resourced organization’, comparable to the UK’s
National Criminal Intelligence Service (NCIS) that, prior to its recent incor-
poration into the Serious Organised Crime Agency, had a staff of over 800
(including seconded staff) and a budget of 67 million pounds (Hayes, 2006).
3. France, for example, has a centralised system, whereas Germany works on a
more fragmented federal level. France has robust laws for detaining terror-
ist suspects and judges specifically trained to deal with the cases, but others
do not.
4. PWGT was set up in 1979 by the Netherlands, the UK, Germany and Belgium.
Currently, it includes all EU Member States plus Switzerland and Norway. For
more information, see Swallow, 2004, pp. 74–76.
5. The Club of Bern was already created in 1971. Although it can act as an
interface between the EU and the heads of Member States’ security and
intelligence services on terrorist matters, this has never been its primary pur-
pose. Rather, it has focused on direct operational cooperation (Müller-Wille,
2008, p. 56).
6. For example, the Commission’s 2005 proposal for a Third Pillar measure aimed
at introducing the principle of availability, which covered a wider range of
data fields than the Prüm Treaty, including DNA profiles, fingerprints, vehicle
registration data, ballistics and telephone numbers and other communica-
tions data. It also provided for stronger safeguards for handling the exchanged
data than the relevant Prüm Treaty provision. This proposal was used as a basis
for a Council Framework Decision, but negotiations stalled in the first half of
2007, largely due to the efforts to incorporate Prüm Treaty into EU law (UK
House of Commons, H.A.C. 2007, para. 131, 143, 281, 282, 284).
7. Intelligence Division of the European Military Staff (INTDIV), European
Union Satellite Center (EUSC).
8. In TESAT 2008, for example, the majority of Member States reported right-
wing and single-issue activities as extremism rather than terrorism (Europol,
2008).
Europol’s Counter-terrorism Role 93
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http://www.law.umaryland.edu, accessed on 28 January 2005.
Argomaniz, J. (2008) Counter-terrorism Policy-making in the EU (Nottingham:
School of Politics & International Relations, University of Nottingham).
Balzacq, T., Bigo, D., Carrera, S. and Guild, E. (2006) ‘Security and the Two-Level
Game: The Treaty of Prüm, the EU and the Management of Threats’, CEPS Work-
ing Document No. 234 (Brussels: Centre for European Policy Studies), http://
shop.ceps.be, accessed on 7 January 2007.
Bendiek, A. (2006) ‘EU Strategy on Counter-terrorism’ (Berlin: German Institute
for International and Security Affairs), http://www.swp-berlin.org, accessed on
7 January 2007.
Benjamin, D. (2005) ‘On Multilateral Counterterrorist Organizations’, The NYU
Review of Law & Security (Special Issue), 14–15, http://www.lawandsecurity.org/
publications/specialissueeurope_000.pdf, accessed on 1 April 2008.
Bensahel, N. (2003) ‘The Counterterror Coalitions: Cooperation with Europe,
NATO, and the European Union’, MR-1746-AF (Santa Monica, CA:
RAND), http://www.rand.org/publications/MR/MR1746/MR1746.pdf, accessed
on 10 January 2005.
Bigo, D. (2006) ‘Liberty, Whose Liberty? The Hague Programme and the Con-
ception of Freedom’ in Balzacq, T. and Carrera, S. (eds) Security Versus Freedom?
A Challenge for Europe’s Future (Aldershot, Ashgate), 35–44.
Bigo, D., Bonelli, L., Chi, D. and Olsson, C. (2007) ‘Mapping the Field of the EU
Internal Security Agencies’ in Bigo, D. (ed.) The Field of the EU Internal Security
Agencies (Paris: L’Harmattan), 5–66.
Bossong, R. (2008a) ‘The Action Plan on Combating Terrorism: A Flawed Instru-
ment of EU Security Governance’, Journal of Common Market Studies, 46(1),
27–48.
Bossong, R. (2008b) ‘The EU’s Mature Counter-terrorism Policy: A Critical Histor-
ical and Functional Assessment’, LSE Challenge Working Paper, http://www2.lse.
ac.uk, accessed on 21 November 2008.
Bures, O. (2010) ‘Perceptions of the Terrorist Threat among EU Member States’,
Central European Journal of International and Security Studies, 4(1), 51–80.
Council of the European Union (1999) Council Decision of 3 December 1998
Instructing Europol to Deal with Crimes Committed or Likely to be Committed in
the Course of Terrorist Activities Against Life, Limb, Personal Freedom or Property,
OJ C 26, 30 January 1999.
Council of the European Union (2001) Conclusions and Plan of Action of the
Extraordinary European Council Meeting on 21 September 2001, SN 140/01
(Brussels: Council of the European Union).
Council of the European Union (2003) Council Decision 2003/48/JHA of 19 Decem-
ber 2002 on the Implementation of Specific Measures for Police and Judicial Coop-
eration to Combat Terrorism in Accordance with Article 4 of Common Position
2001/931/CFSP, OJ L 16, 22 January 2003.
Council of the European Union (2004) Provisional Findings of the Two ‘Peer Eval-
uation’ Mechanisms Affecting the Union Fight Against Terrorism, 9876/04, 26 May
2004 (Brussels: Council of the European Union).
94 Counter-terrorism and Policing in Europe
In its Internal Security Strategy (ISS), the European Union (EU) re-
emphasised its strong commitment to fighting terrorism within its terri-
tory (Council of the European Union, 2010a). Indeed, counter-terrorism
practices are not a purely domestic task anymore. In the aftermath of the
terrorist attacks on New York and Washington, DC, on 11 September
2001 and subsequent terrorist incidents on European territory, ‘police
institutions across the globe have proliferated their counterterrorism
strategies, both domestically and abroad, while international police
have likewise stepped up their campaigns’ (Deflem, 2006a, p. 241). As a
regional actor, the EU quickly identified terrorism as one of the key com-
mon threats its Member States have to face in the current world (Council
of the European Union, 2003, 2010a).1 The transnational nature of the
threat and the realisation that ‘Europe is both a target and a base for
[. . .] terrorism’ (Council of the European Union, 2003, p. 3) are con-
tinuously referred to as justifications for increasing counter-terrorism
activities at the EU level (e.g. Europol, 2008, p. 5). Key features of the
EU’s fight against terrorism are, for example, anti-radicalisation mea-
sures, instruments to combat the financing of terrorism as well as the
strengthening and facilitation of information- and intelligence-sharing
among not only police authorities, but also other security providers,
such as intelligence services (Hillebrand, 2012; Spence, 2007; Howorth,
2008).
While the EU swiftly pushed its counter-terrorism agenda and pro-
vided for institutional and mandatory changes, concerns have been
96
Guarding EU-wide Counter-terrorism Policing 97
In July 2001, the EP’s Committee on Civil Liberties, Justice and Home
Affairs (LIBE) regretted in a report the EU’s ‘slowness in responding
to the terrorist threat and the fact that there is as yet no coherent
and legally binding set of coordinated measures’ (European Parliament,
98 Counter-terrorism and Policing in Europe
LIBE Committee, 2001). Two months later, the events of 9/11 had a con-
siderable impact not only on national policing strategies and powers
in many EU Member States, but also on the EU as a whole. Immedi-
ately afterwards, the then Presidency of the European Council (2001)
stated that the fight against terrorism ought to become a major policy
objective of the Union. The 2010 ISS emphasised that terrorism remains
the main common threat to the EU (Council of the European Union,
2010a).
The EU’s agenda on counter-terrorism has been rightly described as
event driven (see, e.g. Coolsaet, 2010). The 9/11 attacks provoked the
EU to prioritise the fight against terrorism as a policy objective. It led, for
example, to an EU-wide agreement on a common definition of the term
‘terrorism’ and the proliferation of initiatives and institutional changes
as well as the expansion of functions and mandates of institutions in
the area of Justice and Home Affairs (JHA). To tackle terrorism, the
European Security Strategy (ESS) called for a broad response to terror-
ism, suggesting ‘a mixture of intelligence, police, judicial, military and
other means’ (Council of the European Union, 2003, p. 7). Yet, it was
only after the Madrid bombings that the EU’s counter-terrorism efforts
really ‘began to come together’ (Howorth, 2008, p. 96). The bombings
were followed by a Declaration on Combating Terrorism of 15 March
2004, providing for a long-term EU strategy to combat terrorism with
a particular focus on the root causes of terrorism. Notably, the Decla-
ration also provided for the expansion of Europol’s competences and
the establishment of the Joint Situation Centre (SitCen), an intelligence
unit which is now part of the European External Action Service (see also
Occhipinti’s chapter in this volume). The 2005 EU Counter-Terrorism
Strategy finally became the main point of reference for the EU’s counter-
terrorism efforts, identifying four key areas in which the EU was
to become more proactive: ‘Prevent’ (radicalisation and recruitment),
‘Protect’ (people and infrastructure from terrorist attacks), ‘Pursue’ (ter-
rorists) and ‘Respond’ (to a terrorist attack) (Council of the European
Union, 2005a).
Given that the EU prioritises a law enforcement approach to terror-
ism, most of its efforts are located in the field of police and judicial
cooperation in criminal matters (PJCC).3 Certainly, ‘large chunks of
counterterrorism endeavours in Europe remain principally within the
confines of national decision-making’ (Coolsaet, 2010, p. 858). That
refers, in particular, to sensitive operational matters. There is neverthe-
less an increasing pressure on security providers to adopt an approach of
‘need to share’, rather than maintain the traditional approach of ‘need
Guarding EU-wide Counter-terrorism Policing 99
to know’ (for the international realm see, e.g. Andreas and Nadelmann,
2006; Gill and Phythian, 2006). Concerning counter-terrorism, logis-
tical, financial and administrative efforts have been made to facilitate
such international collaboration.
The EU broadly focuses on the enhancement of communication
between counter-terrorist actors at various policy levels. In the oper-
ational fields of policing and intelligence, the term ‘communica-
tion’ mainly refers to information- and intelligence-sharing (see also
Occhipinti’s chapter in this volume). For example, the so-called Swedish
Framework Decision of 2006 called on national law enforcement author-
ities to improve their information-sharing; and the aim of a 2005
Council Decision was to strengthen the exchange of information con-
cerning terrorist offences (Council of the European Union, 2005b,
2006). Collecting and analysing information about suspicious individ-
uals and behaviour is widely understood to be of utmost relevance for
detecting terrorist suspects and intervening before the actual criminal
offence. Disrupting terrorist networks often depends on ‘low-level, fac-
tual and fragmented’ (Gibson, 2009, p. 923) information, including
foreign phone numbers, travel records or credit card transactions.
The EU-wide institutional provisions in this field vary immensely. For
example, the 2008 Council Decisions concerning the stepping up of
cross-border cooperation with a particular focus on counter-terrorism
and cross-border crime, based on an international treaty between the
governments of Germany, Austria, Belgium, The Netherlands and Spain
(Treaty of Prüm), allow for the sharing of data among national law
enforcement authorities including fingerprints, deoxyribonucleic acid
(DNA) samples and vehicle registrations (Council of the European
Union, 2008a,b). Other forms of bi- as well as multilateral cooperation
are more informal and partly take place outside the EU framework (see
Den Boer et al., 2008). The most formal example of strengthened coop-
eration in the field of law enforcement, and counter-terrorism as well,
is Europol, the central Europe-wide law enforcement body based in The
Hague.
Europol aims to facilitate the exchange of information and crim-
inal intelligence in the field of law enforcement. The body is best
understood as a formal network due to its elaborated liaison system
including Europol Liaison Officers (ELOs) seconded not only from
national authorities of the EU Member States, but also from non-EU
countries and international organisations, such as Interpol.4 Europol’s
central secretariat is located in The Hague and was staffed, according
to the Europol website, with 802 people in 2012, including ELOs and
100 Counter-terrorism and Policing in Europe
Nevertheless, the JHA Council ignored this criticism and adopted the
four proposals during a meeting on 30 November – one day before
the Lisbon Treaty became effective (Council of the European Union,
2009b–e).
Yet, the EP has not been entirely ‘toothless’ in the field of PJCC.
For example, the EP increased its influence in these matters over time
through so-called issue linkages. Since the Parliament’s approbation was
necessary for First Pillar legislation, it sometimes agreed on a legal instru-
ment only under the condition that its opinion would be considered
seriously with respect to a certain Third Pillar measures. Such was the
case concerning the debate about the VIS, for example (McGinley and
Parkes, 2007, p. 248).
Also, the investigation into the European involvement in the CIA’s
extraordinary rendition programme must be understood as a counter-
terrorism feature where the EP acted as a substitute at a time when NPs
were not sufficiently safeguarding their role as accountability holders
(Hillebrand, 2009). Following an investigation by the Council of Europe
into the involvement of European countries in cases of extraordinary
rendition, the EP used its powers to set up a temporary committee on the
alleged use of European countries by the CIA for the transport and illegal
detention of prisoners (TDIP) (European Parliament, TDIP, 2007; see also
Council of Europe Parliamentary Assembly, 2006, 2007). The collection
of information appeared to be a challenging task, partly because some
EU bodies were reluctant to assist the work of the TDIP committee. As a
consequence, the final report bluntly criticised the lack of cooperation
of individual EU officials and institutions in the investigation, including
the refusal of the then Director of Europol, Max-Peter Ratzel, to appear
before the committee.
Given the limited role of the EP in the intergovernmental decision-
making processes within the Third Pillar and with respect to Europol in
particular, it pushed initiatives to change Europol’s legal basis for some
time. Most notably, in a 2003 Resolution on Europol’s Future Develop-
ments, it suggested to replace the existing Europol Convention with a
Council decision so that decisions relating to Europol would no longer
be taken by the Council acting unanimously but would need to be
adopted by qualified majority voting and by co-decision with the EP
(European Parliament, 2003). The EP also required to be ‘provided with
the legal means and institutional framework to enable it in the future to
exercise genuine democratic control’ (Apap, 2006, p. 4).
The transfer from an intergovernmental institution to an EU
agency also meant that Europol would lose autonomy and that its
108 Counter-terrorism and Policing in Europe
disregard shown to date by the Commission and Council for the role
of the European Parliament and national parliaments in drawing up
this strategy [. . .] Incredible as it may appear, the principal strategic
documents adopted to date by the European Council, the Council
and the Commission seem to ignore the existence of the European
Parliament altogether.
(European Parliament, LIBE Committee, 2011, p. 4)
Guarding EU-wide Counter-terrorism Policing 109
in the field of data protection in the Third Pillar also expressed their
impression that NPs either have no time, do not take the time, have no
interest or do not prioritise the area of police cooperation (Interview B,
2008). Given such limitations and restrictions, the general role of the
NPs concerning police cooperation has been described as a ‘non-role’
(Lodge, 2007). Other observers have, however, argued that, in contrast
to the EP, NPs often ‘had better opportunities to influence the legisla-
tion processes in the Third Pillar, due to the unanimity requirement’
(Lummer, 2008).
Concerning Europol, NPs used to be involved in the ratification pro-
cess concerning the proposals to amend the Europol Convention and
the protocols thereto. Such a national ratification process could push
the involvement of NPs to explore Europol’s work (Peers, 2005, p. 203).
Moreover, NPs have the powers to oversee their national representatives
on Europol’s Management Board. These representatives do not report
directly to their parliaments, however, but to their respective govern-
ment minister and, as the collective board, to the JHAs Council. The
national ministers are then answerable to their parliaments.
Up to the entry into force of the Europol Council Decision, the role
of NPs concerning issues related to Europol was not clearly regulated.
Article 34, paragraph 3 of the Europol Convention only pointed to
the fact that the Member States’ governments should deal with the
parliamentary role individually. As a consequence, NPs were usually
not involved in any of the agreements that Europol negotiated with
third parties (such as the two Europol–US agreements discussed above).
Their involvement was limited to the ratification process of propos-
als for amending the Europol Convention and the protocols thereto.
In this process, they did not have an impact on the text, but only decide
whether or not they want to ratify the amendment. For example, when
the Europol Convention – Europol’s previous legal base – was originally
established, neither the EP nor the NPs were consulted in the negotia-
tions or the process of drafting the Convention. When questioned about
the involvement of parliament in drafting and approving the Conven-
tion in the British House of Commons on 11 January 1996, the then
British Home Secretary, Michael Howard, replied in writing as follows:
‘The final text of the Europol convention was published, and laid before
Parliament, on 8 December last year. Drafts of the convention were
not public documents and therefore were not published nor made gen-
erally available’ (House of Commons, 1996). Tellingly, he added that
‘[the] police service was closely consulted throughout the negotiation
of the convention through police representative organizations’ (House
112 Counter-terrorism and Policing in Europe
of Commons, 1996). Thus, while parliaments and the wider public were
not involved in the negotiations at all, executive authorities were much
more so. Moreover, the ratification process of the Europol Convention
provided the NPs with no power to amend the text. This is a crucial
basic problem with respect to Europol since, as Aden stated, ‘[once]
established, international bureaucratic institutions such as Europol will
leave little scope to be reshaped by democratic institutions’ (Aden,
2001, p. 112).
Up to today, NPs primarily examine Europol’s performance ‘through
their control over their respective governments, in accordance with
the constitutional rules of each Member State’ (European Commission,
2010, p. 8). Crucially, NPs supervise the work of the minister responsible
for policing, and therefore also Europol. However, the recent transfer of
the Europol Convention by a secondary EU law act in 2009 carries the
danger that NPs might no longer be directly involved in future changes
to Europol’s legal framework. Future amendments to the Europol Coun-
cil Decision only require a qualified majority voting in the Council. This
appears to be a considerable loss of powers for NPs as the ratification
process of changes to Europol’s statutory footing was one of the few
ways through which NPs were involved in Europol’s scrutiny (Lavranos,
2003, p. 261). This way NPs were able to ‘influence decisions at EU level
by pressuring their governments to veto a certain law’ (Lummer, 2008).
The involvement of parliaments should not be limited to the approval of
a convention anyway, however. Instead, they should already be engaged
during the preparation process so they could have an impact on the con-
tent of agreements. In a similar vein, a report on Europol by the House
of Lords Select Committee on the European Union pledged for a strong
role of the NPs in the accountability procedure of Europol (House of
Lords, Select Committee on the European Union, 2003).
Paradoxically, certain aspects of the TFEU suggest a potentially
strengthened role for NPs. In general, NPs are called on to ‘contribute
actively to the good functioning of the Union’ (Article 12, TFEU). More
specifically, the Treaty explicitly calls for NPs to engage with issues con-
cerning the AFSJ (e.g. by ensuring that EU legislation in this area respects
the principle of subsidiarity). With respect to Europol, NPs are to be
involved in the ‘political monitoring’ (Article 12(c), TFEU) of its activi-
ties. However, the wording of the TFEU in this respect is vague, and it
remains to be seen which mechanisms NPs will use to fulfil their new
mandate. Moreover, under the Lisbon Treaty, NPs receive from the Com-
mission any draft legislative act at the same time as it is transmitted to
the EP and the Council. They are asked to verify the latter’s compliance
Guarding EU-wide Counter-terrorism Policing 113
Conclusion
Acknowledgement
The author would like to thank those who have provided constructive
feedback on earlier versions of this chapter, notably the participants
at the ‘European Security, Terrorism and Intelligence: Past and Present’
Conference at the University of Salford in 2009. The original research for
this chapter has been supported by a Marie Curie Early Stage Research
Training Fellowship of the European Community.
Notes
1. This chapter refers to terrorism as defined in Article 1 of the Council Frame-
work Decision of 13 June 2002 on combating terrorism (see Council of the
European Union, 2002a).
2. Recent references to such values can be found in official documents, such as
the Lisbon Treaty, the ISS and the Stockholm Programme (European Council,
2010).
3. In addition, the EU implemented preventive administrative measures to
fight terrorism proactively. Key examples are the establishment of ter-
rorist watchlists, the exchange of Passenger Name Records (PNR) with
countries such as the US as well as the EU’s efforts to freeze terrorist
assets.
4. Laurence O’Toole (1997, p. 445) refers to networks as ‘structures of interdepen-
dence involving multiple organizations. They exhibit some structural stability
and include, but extend beyond, formal linkages alone’. See also Gerspacher
and Dupont (2007) and Deflem (2006b).
5. Article 72 of the TFEU maintains that the ultimate responsibility for the main-
tenance of law and order and the safeguarding of internal security lies with
the Member States.
6. The Europol–US agreements are examples of the growing external dimension
of the AFSJ. In this dimension, the fight against terrorism is also one of the
priority areas (see European Commission, 2005).
7. There are severe limitations to the EP’s role given special provisions on several
issues concerning police and judicial cooperation. In particular, operational
cooperation among national law enforcement authorities is an area in which
the EP will continue to have only a consultative role.
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122 Counter-terrorism and Policing in Europe
127
128 Counter-terrorism and Intelligence in Europe
or as activities (de Bruijn and Hufen, 1998, pp. 13–14). In the first sense,
instruments are tangible, that is, mostly material phenomena. In con-
trast, as practices, instruments are ‘a collection of policy activities that
show similar characteristics focused on influencing and governing social
purposes’ (Ringeling, 1983, p. 1).
This distinction is coherent and useful, but incomplete. It does not
allow for a synthetic understanding of tools. Thus, the precise mean-
ing of tools remains underspecified, which is not necessarily surprising.
Indeed, certain instruments that are traditionally regarded as objects
have, on closer scrutiny, the main endogenous features of activities
(Hood, 1983). For this reason, in this chapter, we define a tool or instru-
ment of securitisation as an identifiable social and technical ‘dispositif’ or
device embodying a specific threat image through which public action is config-
ured in order to address a security issue (Linder and Peters, 1984; Salamon,
2002, p. 19; Lascoumes and Le Galès, 2004, p. 13). On the basis of this
definition, imperfect as it may be, it is possible to highlight three basic
characteristics of securitisation tools.
Firstly, each tool has specific features, some of which align it with
other tools, whereas other features render it unique or, at least, differ-
ent from other tools. For instance, all Justice and Home Affairs (JHA)
databases in the EU require the collection, storage and exchange of
information, but they differ significantly in the nature of the infor-
mation they hold, the duration of the data storage and the conditions
under which the data can be retrieved. Secondly, tools configure actions,
in the sense that each tool ‘has its own operating procedures, skills
requirements, and delivering mechanisms, indeed its own “political
economy” ’ (Salamon, 2002, p. 2). What is involved here, moreover,
is the idea that a tool is a kind of institution. According to this view,
it is a routine set of rules and procedures that structure interactions
among individuals and organisations. In short, policy tools can config-
ure social relations in decisive ways. In this respect, by their very nature,
tools ‘define who is involved in the operation of public programmes,
what their roles are, and how they relate to each other’ (Salamon, 2002,
p. 19). In other words, tools of securitisation reconfigure public action
in the field of security, the aim of which is to address issues identi-
fied as threats. Thirdly, policy tools embody a specific image of a threat
and, to a large extent, what ought to be done about it. In this respect,
JHA databases not only quantify but also categorise individuals entering
into and moving within the EU area, as well as commanding a particular
method of policing, namely tracing and localising those whose details
are stored in the databases (Brouwer, 2006).
132 Counter-terrorism and Intelligence in Europe
As a result, the study of securitisation tools and their attributes can also
shed light on the threat that public action is seeking to address through
their deployment. Furthermore, it reveals policy preferences and the
direction of action. Despite basic similar attributes, each securitisation
tool has different effects. In addition, different tools are not equally
effective in all cases. Indeed, securitisation tools can sometimes have
limited consequences or indirect effects. It therefore becomes obvious
A ‘Securitisation Tool’ Approach 133
Capacity tools
Attempts to classify policy instruments are quite common in the pub-
lic policy literature (Hood, 1983; Schneider and Ingram, 1990; van
Nispen and Ringeling, 1998, pp. 204–217; Lascoumes and Le Galès,
2004, pp. 357–363). There is no shortage of typologies. This is mainly
due to the fact that public action specialists use different features in
order to compare and contrast tools. Hood, for example, focuses on
two key dimensions, namely the role of the government by which
tools are used and the government resources that they enlist, such as
organisation and authority (Hood, 1983). From a different theoretical
perspective, McDonnell and Elmore distinguish between instruments
according to the strategy of intervention that governments use, lead-
ing to four types of tools: mandates, capacity building, system changing
and inducements (McDonnell and Elmore, 1987). Also, mainly on the
basis of the type of governmental intervention, van der Doelen divides
tools into three distinct categories, namely legal, communication and
economic tools (van der Doelen, 1989). Finally, Schneider and Ingram
produce a fivefold classification emphasising the behaviour that tools
seek to change: authority, incentive, capacity, symbolic and learning
tools (Schneider and Ingram, 1990). Thus, each categorisation attempts
to capture different facets of the policy tools.
As explained before, this chapter focuses on databases because of their
importance in the EU counter-terrorism policy. Databases belong to the
category of capacity tools. In simple terms, capacity tools allow indi-
viduals, groups and agencies to make decisions and carry out activities,
which have a reasonable probability of success (Schneider and Ingram,
1990, p. 517). In this sense, capacity tools notably include informa-
tion systems, training and other resources necessary to the attainment
of policy purposes. Moreover, capacity tools, like any other tools, are
often unstable. For example, there is regular pressure to change the rules
governing EU databases, to extend their functions and to mobilise new
resources in order to tackle issues that are perceived to be threatening.
Eurodac
Eurodac was established by Council Regulation 2725/2000 of 11 Decem-
ber 2000 and became operational in 2003. In contrast with the VIS,
which is examined below, Eurodac is used by all the EU Member States,
as well as Norway, Iceland, Liechtenstein and Switzerland. Its main aim
is to support the application of the Dublin Convention, which lays
down criteria for determining the EU Member State that is responsi-
ble for the examination of a specific application for asylum. Eurodac
comprises a Central Unit and a system for electronic data transmission
between EU countries and the database. The central database stores the
fingerprint data of asylum seekers, which national authorities collect at
the time of the asylum application, as well as the fingerprint data of per-
sons who have been apprehended while attempting to cross an external
border irregularly.3 In all cases, only persons who are at least 14 years old
have their fingerprints taken. Eurodac, therefore, enables Member States
to compare fingerprint data in order to determine whether a person has
previously lodged an application for asylum in another Member State.
Thus, the remit of Eurodac, as a policy tool, was initially clearly limited
to asylum and migration matters.
A ‘Securitisation Tool’ Approach 135
countries whose nationals are not required to have a visa to enter the
Schengen area, and a so-called ‘black’ list, which comprises the coun-
tries whose nationals are required to have a visa to enter the Schengen
area. In 2008, there were 130 countries on the ‘black’ list, comprising
almost all the countries of Africa, the Middle East, South Asia and Cen-
tral Asia. In other words, some categories of third country nationals are
considered a priori to be more threatening to the EU than others.
In contrast with the case of Eurodac, the terrorist attacks of 9/11 pre-
dated and actually played a role in the decision to establish the VIS.
In the immediate aftermath of the attacks, the JHA Council called for
the establishment of ‘a network for information exchanges concerning
the visas issued’, which would be more efficient than the VISION (Visa
Inquiry Open-border Network) consultation network that was used at
the time (Council of the European Union, 2001, p. 9; EPEC, 2004,
pp. 13–14). In February 2002, the Council called for the development
of a ‘European Visa Identification System’, as part of a plan to com-
bat illegal immigration and the trafficking of human beings in the EU.
In June of that year, the Heads of State and Government gathered in
Seville identified the development of such a system as a top priority.
The Council eventually adopted Decision 2004/512/EC establishing the
VIS in June 2004. It was initially planned that the VIS would become
operational in 2006. However, because of various technical difficulties,
the launch of the system was delayed until 2011. The VIS comprises a
‘Central Visa Information System’ (CS-VIS), an interface in each Member
State (‘National Interface’ (NI-VIS)) and a communication infrastructure
that links the national systems to the central system.
By connecting consulates in non-EU countries and all external border
crossing points of Schengen states, the VIS allows the members of the
Schengen area to exchange data and decisions concerning applications
for short-stay visas in order to check the authenticity of visas and the
identity of their holders. The VIS records alphanumerical data concern-
ing the visa applicants, biometrical data, including digital photographs
and fingerprints, as well as links to the application files of those trav-
elling together and to previous visa applications. Thus, the VIS mainly
aims to support the implementation of a common visa policy.
However, since the early stages of its development, the VIS has been
framed as a ‘multipurpose tool’ (Brouwer, 2006, p. 137). On 7 March
2005, the Council (Council of the European Union, 2005a, p. 15)
decided that the authorities of the Member States responsible for
internal security should be guaranteed access to the VIS ‘in order
to achieve fully the aim of improving internal security and the
138 Counter-terrorism and Intelligence in Europe
Conclusion
This chapter has shown that, in the EU, the fight against terrorism, as
charted in Chapter 1 in this volume, has had an important impact on
information-sharing. It has prompted the reinforcement of data collec-
tion, processing and retention. In addition, the significant acceleration
in EU counter-terrorism cooperation that has followed 9/11 has had
a substantial impact on the design of the VIS, while also leading to
A ‘Securitisation Tool’ Approach 139
Acknowledgements
The authors would like to thank all the colleagues who have provided
helpful comments on earlier drafts of this chapter. This chapter partially
draws upon an article by Balzacq published in the Journal of Common
Market Studies, volume 46, issue 1, in 2008.
Notes
1. Eurodac stands for ‘European Dactyloscopy’.
2. Other types of instruments used by the EU for fighting terrorism include reg-
ulatory instruments, such as legislative acts, and incentive instruments, such
as development aid.
3. In addition, in certain circumstances, Member States may transfer to the Cen-
tral Unit the fingerprint data of persons who have been found in an illegal
situation on their territory.
140 Counter-terrorism and Intelligence in Europe
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7
Availability by Stealth? EU
Information-sharing in
Transatlantic Perspective
John D. Occhipinti
143
144 Counter-terrorism and Intelligence in Europe
Institutional change
The failure to share information helps explain why the US intelligence
community was unable to foresee and prevent the terrorist attacks
of 9/11. The 9/11 Commission Report of 2004, in particular, cites sev-
eral instances of inadequate information-sharing prior to 11 September
2001 regarding the flow of information not only within some law
enforcement and intelligence agencies, but also among them. This was
146 Counter-terrorism and Intelligence in Europe
the situation, for example, within the law enforcement and counter-
terrorism (CT) section of the Department of Justice (DOJ), as well as
between the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) and Central Intelli-
gence Agency (CIA). For example, after 9/11, it was revealed that the
CIA had delayed giving the FBI details about two of the eventual hijack-
ers once it knew that they had entered the US after having attended an
Al Qaeda strategy meeting in Malaysia in 2000.
The popular metaphor used to describe limited information-sharing
is ‘stove-piping’. This refers the way smoke is produced by a stove and
then travels outward vertically in its own conduit, keeping it isolated
from its environment until its release. When applied to intelligence,
stove-piping refers to lack of horizontal intelligence-sharing within and
among agencies in the fight against crime and terrorism. Stove-piping
prevents police and security analysts from having access to all available
intelligence, which potentially inhibits their ability to ‘connect the dots’
and identify terrorist and criminal threats in advance.
By the start of 2003, the Bush administration was under Congres-
sional pressure to improve information-sharing in the war on terrorism.
Within a year, the impetus for to reform was only increased by the fail-
ure of the US to discover any weapons of mass destruction (WMDs) in
Iraq, after largely justifying its invasion of that country based their exis-
tence. All of this contributed to several legal and institutional reforms
to the US intelligence community aimed at preventing the stove-piping
of intelligence.
The USA Patriot Act of October 2001 had already made a significant
contribution to this by essentially eliminating the perceived ‘wall’ pre-
venting information-sharing between the FBI and CIA. Facilitating this
information-sharing link between foreign intelligence gathering (by the
CIA) and domestic law enforcement investigations (by the FBI) was
generally viewed as appropriate in the post-9/11. In contrast, other
provisions of the USA Patriot Act were eventually subjects of some
controversy, such as the legislation’s provisions on surveillance, infor-
mation requests and searches. As the memory of 9/11 faded in the
US, many aspects of the USA Patriot Act came under greater Congres-
sional and public scrutiny, but not its important provision allowing
information-sharing between the CIA and FBI.
Another major innovation in US efforts to mitigate stove-piping came
in form of major institutional change, starting with President Bush’s
announcement during his State of the Union Speech in January 2003
to create a ‘Terrorist Threat Integration Center’ (TTIC). Created via an
executive order signed by Bush in June 2003, the TTIC was intended
A Transatlantic Perspective 147
CT data are actually shared effectively and in a timely fashion. First cre-
ated in 1980 in New York City among metropolitan police officers and
FBI officials, there were eventually 35 JTTF’s in place before 9/11. After-
wards, another 65 JTTFs were added in cities across the US, including
one for each of the FBI’s 56 field offices. The work of these bodies is
coordinated by a national JTTF (NJTTF), which is based at FBI headquar-
ters in Washington, DC, and brings together officials from more than 30
federal agencies. By changing the way the CIA is permitted to share data
with other law enforcement authorities, USA Patriot Act has facilitated
the contribution of the CIA to the work of the JTTFs at both the national
and field office levels.
In addition to the JTTFs, most US states and a few large cities have
established so-called ‘fusion centres’, which bring together law enforce-
ment from various levels of government but are owned and operated by
state and local authorities. Here, the term ‘fusion’ refers to ‘the overarch-
ing process of managing the flow of information and intelligence across
all levels and sectors of government and private industry’ (DOJ and DHS,
2006). Most of the existing fusion centres were created in 2004–2005
and utilised funding from a variety of local, state and especially federal
sources.
In the absence of a single nation-wide plan for their development, the
initial fusion centres evolved differently, inhibiting information-sharing
among them. With this problem in mind, the DOJ spearheaded the
development of guidelines for the fusion centres, and, working with the
Department of Homeland Security (DHS), publishing these in 2005 and
later updated these within a year. According to these guidelines,
By October 2008, there were 58 fusion centres in the US, and by Novem-
ber 2010, this number grew to 72, with analysts from DHS participating
in most of these.
Meanwhile, the FBI also participates in more half of the fusion cen-
tres through its 56 Field Intelligence Groups (FIGs), which serve as
A Transatlantic Perspective 149
the primary link between the FBI and the fusion centre network. The
FIGs are composed of intelligence analysts, special agents, language
analysts and surveillance specialists and are charged with taking raw
information from local cases or obtained from participation in fusion
centres, and making big-picture sense of it. FIGs also use local infor-
mation to fill in gaps in national cases with local information and
share their findings, assessments and reports with the entire intelligence
community.
Leadership
In addition to these institutional developments aimed at promoting
information-sharing, the IRTPA of 2004 prescribed the creation of the
DNI to oversee the work of the entire US intelligence community.
In principle, the Director of the CIA had played this role since this
position was created in 1946. However, the DCI never had much
real influence on the work of the intelligence community beyond the
CIA itself. The DCI was, in practice, ‘merely’ the head of the CIA and
principal intelligence advisor to the President.
The creation of the office of the DNI changed this situation in sev-
eral regards. First, the DNI has direct authority over the DCI and CIA as
well as the work of the new NCTC, giving him influence over its work
and information-sharing. Two additional sources of the DNI’s powers
stem from the Bush administration’s response in June 2005 to some of
the recommendations found in the report of the Silberman–Robb Com-
mission on WMDs (‘WMD Report’). By executive order, the DNI has
authority over not only the CIA and its budget, but also most of the FBI’s
$3 billion annual intelligence budget. Second, President Bush ordered
the creation of ‘national security service’ within in the FBI, to bring
together its divisions on CT, counter-intelligence and WMD prolifera-
tion. The head of this body, which eventually became known as the
National Security Branch (NSB), is chosen jointly by the FBI Director,
Attorney General and the DNI. Related to this, the DNI is permitted
to communicate with FBI field offices through the head of the NSB or
its staff.
For a variety of reasons, there has been little continuity in this new
position. In fact, as of March 2013, there had been four directors and
one acting director in the new role. John Negroponte, a career diplomat,
became the first DNI in 2005 and he was replaced in February 2007 by
Michael McConnell, a retired admiral. Under the new administration of
President Barack Obama, McConnell was replaced in January 2009 by
another retired admiral, Dennis Blair.
150 Counter-terrorism and Intelligence in Europe
Information-sharing strategy
Along with changes of legal frameworks, institutions and leadership,
there have been a number of key developments in the US specifically
aimed at improving informational-sharing. Soon after his State of the
Union address in which he announced plans for the TTIC, President
Bush made an important speech at FBI headquarters in Washington,
A Transatlantic Perspective 151
all across our country we’ll be able to tie our terrorist information
to local information banks so that the front line of defeating terror
becomes activated and real, and those are the local law enforcement
officials. We expect them to be a part of our effort; we must give them
the tools necessary so they can do their job.
(U.S. Department of Justice, 2005)
These five keystones provide the rational for moving to a new model of
information-sharing that differs in six important ways from the ‘legacy
model’ that it replaced. Over time, as the new information-sharing
model replaces the legacy model, it is intended to foster greater collabo-
ration among intelligence community stakeholders and partners (Office
of the Director of National Intelligence, 2008, p. 9).
Finally, the third section of the strategy on ‘Implementing Our Strat-
egy’ focuses mainly on the challenges that must be overcome to improve
information-sharing. These are grouped into five main areas, known as
‘building blocks’, that entail key challenges that must be met for the
actual sharing of information to be improved.
The building block of ‘governance’ refers to the environment of
oversight and leadership for information-sharing among different agen-
cies. ‘Policy’ refers the specific rules for sharing and encompasses
national and internal policies, as well as rules of engagement, standards,
including those related to the protection of data vis-à-vis national
154 Counter-terrorism and Intelligence in Europe
Nevertheless, parallel challenges exist for both the EU and the US and
comparing these is indeed worthwhile. Beyond the common issue of
stove-piping, there is the task of using of new information technol-
ogy to ensure that data is collected, shared and analysed effectively.
For the EU, there is the added challenge of dealing with the linguis-
tic translation of intelligence or analyses into a working language of
a country’s security apparatus (e.g. their own language or another,
such as English), and doing so in a timely fashion. Second, and more
importantly, there is the issue of international trust (Walsh, 2006). Just
as in the US, where inter-agency rivalries need to be overcome and
federal agencies must find trusted partners for information exchange
with state and local law enforcement, police and security officials in
EU Member States must become comfortable with exchanging sensi-
tive intelligence multilaterally and almost automatically – and not just
bilaterally on a selective basis (or not at all) – if stove-piping is to be
avoided.
Availability by stealth?
In the recent past, some EU Member States, especially the United King-
dom (UK), have resisted calls by others, such as Belgium and Austria,
to improve information-sharing by creating an actual EU intelligence
agency. Instead, efforts have largely focused on the construction of a
new institutional infrastructure of crime fighting and CT at the EU
level, which is intended to facilitate collaboration, coordination and
the exchange of information among the Member States’ respective law
enforcement and internal security authorities. Since 2010, however, spe-
cific references to the availability principle have not been prominent as
one would expect given its importance to the AFSJ.
For example, these mechanisms and structures were among the many
initiatives included by the Commission in its 2010 public communica-
tion that outlined all of the EU’s tools used to promote information-
sharing, including nearly 20 programmes, agencies and agreements
governing the exchange of personal, business and telecom data of
EU citizens (European Commission, 2010a; Mahony, 2010; Vandystadt,
2010a). Astonishingly, in this communication, the availability principle
is mentioned only once in passing as the basis for a Commission pro-
posal in 2005 that was eventually withdrawn (see below). After detailing
all these instruments, the Commission report provides an ‘analysis’ that
describes the general nature of information-sharing in the EU in eight
points. Specifically, EU information-sharing is noted by its (1) decen-
tralised structure; (2) the limited purpose of each instrument involved;
(3) the overlapping function of several instruments regarding the data
156 Counter-terrorism and Intelligence in Europe
collected; (4) the controlled access rights to the data; (5) the vary-
ing rules on data retention among the instruments; (6) the effective
use of identity management, especially biometrics; (7) the increasing
preference of national authorities to use EU-provided means of shar-
ing sensitive data; and (8) the divergent review mechanism among the
databases (pp. 21–24). The availability principle is not discussed.
More surprisingly, the availability principle is still absent from the
next part of the report, where the Commission ‘proposes to develop
and implement new initiatives and evaluate current instruments on the
basis of two sets of principles’ (pp. 24–27). The ‘substantive principles’
entail (1) safeguarding fundamental rights, including privacy and data
protection; (2) the necessity of collecting and sharing data; (3) ensuring
that EU activities do not violate the subsidiarity principle, as expressed,
in particular, in the protocol related to the Lisbon Treaty; and (4) the
basing the sharing of risk assessments on accurate evidence and not
merely hypothetical threats. Meanwhile, the set of ‘process-oriented
principles’ include (1) cost-effectiveness; (2) bottom-up design; (3) the
clear allocation of responsibilities; and (4) the inclusion of review and
sunset clauses. Once again, there is mention of neither the availability
principle, nor its goals. This is also the case for the report’s very brief
conclusion. What is interesting is that most of the information-sharing
instruments described in the report do, indeed, promote the availability
principle, including several specific mechanisms to be discussed below
in this paper.
Likewise, the handling of information-sharing in the EU’s Internal
Security Strategy (ISS), published in 2010, is also noteworthy (European
Commission, 2010b). Despite the growing list of EU instruments
devoted to information-sharing in the fight against cross-border crime
and terrorism, the promotion of information-sharing is not mentioned
in the strategy as a major challenge, strategic objective or planned
action – and the availability principle per se is not mentioned at all.
However, a few aspects of the strategy do relate to information, and
these will also be discussed below.
In addition, the neglect of the availability principle in the Commis-
sion communication and ISS of 2010 is also interesting because it is
featured fairly prominently in the Stockholm Programme, which pro-
vides the EU’s policy agenda for its AFSJ for 2010–2014. This agenda
built on the work of the ‘Future Group’, which consisted of the EU’s
JHA Commissioner, and the JHA ministers from the current and next
EU Trio presidencies at the time (Germany, Portugal, Slovenia, France,
Czech Republic and Sweden), plus a member of the Council Secretariat
A Transatlantic Perspective 157
and the chair of the EP’s JHA Committee (i.e. LIBE) as observers
(Kaunert, 2010, pp. 220–225). The Future Group produced a set of rec-
ommendations in June 2008 that included several references to the
importance of the availability principle, as well as an entire section of
the report devoted to ‘the Principle of Availability and a European Union
Law Enforcement Information Management Strategy (EU IMS)’ (Future
Group, 2008; Wolff, 2009).
Several of the Future Group’s prescriptions can be found in the
Stockholm’s Programme’s fourth main section, entitled ‘A Europe that
Protects’, which includes a sub-section on ‘Upgrading the tools for the
job’. This part of the Stockholm Programme contains a sub-section on
‘Managing the flow of information’ that begins:
In this context, the Stockholm Programme invites the Council and the
Commission to ‘assess the need for developing a European Informa-
tion Exchange Model’ and ‘to implement the Information Management
Strategy for EU internal security’. As noted at the start of this chapter,
work on the latter is well under way having resulted in conclusion
that were approved by the JHA Council at the end of November 2009
(Council of the European Union, 2009a). The availability principle is
mentioned at several points in these conclusions, indicating its con-
tinued significance for the future of information-sharing in the EU.
Moreover, as with the Stockholm Programme itself, the conclusions are
careful to balance and juxtapose the expressed need for the sharing of
data to fight crime and terrorism with need for safeguards to protect per-
sonal data and privacy. Nevertheless, the preamble of the conclusions
for an EU information-sharing strategy also notes that ‘the principle of
availability also requires citizens’ expectations of privacy to be balanced
against their expectations of security’ (p. 5).
This clear support of the availability principle in these conclu-
sions and the Stockholm Programme makes its omission noteworthy
regarding the Commission’s communication on information-sharing
158 Counter-terrorism and Intelligence in Europe
Institutional change
The evolution of the EU’s institutional structures of crime fighting and
CT can be traced back to the 1970s and the formation of the Trevi
Group in 1975 by the nine Member States of the European Community
(EC). Existing outside of formal treaty structures of the EC, the Trevi
group was essentially a collection of largely ad hoc working groups and
forums held among Member States’ law enforcement, security and inte-
rior ministry officials, including an annual summit of interior ministers.
In November 1993, institutional cooperation became more permanent
and regularised with entry into force of the Maastricht Treaty and the
resulting creation of the new ‘European Union’ and its so-called ‘third
pillar’ devoted to ‘Justice and Home Affairs’. By the 1999, with the
Amsterdam Treaty and the Tampere Programme, the EU was on its way
to establishing a number of new institutions and policies that would
promote information-sharing as part of its newly defined AFSJ.
Before examining key developments in this regard, one noteworthy
example of European-level information-sharing outside of the EU treaties
should be mentioned, namely the Counter-Terrorism Group (CTG) (see
also Svendsen’s chapter in this volume). This was created after Septem-
ber 2001 by the parties to the ‘Berne Club’, which was originally formed
in 1971 as a forum for national intelligence officials. Today, the CTG
organises gatherings of the heads of security and intelligence services
from the 20 EU Member States plus Norway and Switzerland to foster
cooperation on broad range of security issues (Walsh, 2006). In par-
ticular, the CTG provides an opportunity for national experts to share
A Transatlantic Perspective 159
data and analyses of Islamic extremist terrorism and develop and share
periodic threat assessments (Den Boer et al., 2008, p. 116).
Europol
Among other things, the Maastricht Treaty prescribed the establish-
ment the European Police Office (Europol), which was created via the
intergovernmental negotiations of a convention and several related pro-
tocols, each requiring ratification in the EU Member States. After much
delay, Europol became fully operational in 1999 and remains a cen-
tral component in the EU’s role as a facilitator of information-sharing
related among its Member States. In 2008, the JHA Council decided
to transform Europol into a formal EU agency, which, since 2010, has
allowed it to be funded out of the Community budget and has eased
the legislative process of altering its mandate and powers (Busuioc et al.,
2011; see also Hillebrand’s chapter in this volume).
At its heart, Europol is an international liaison network of criminal
investigators supported by a criminal intelligence database and a per-
manent staff of analysts and national experts drawn from Member State
authorities, such as police and customs. At various times, the overall
effectiveness of Europol has been questioned, but there is no doubt
that it is being increasingly used, given its steadily increasing caseload
(European Police Office, 2010). Moreover, the 9/11 attacks led to the
creation of a CT task force in Europol. However, Europol has not been
fully utilised in this area, leading to its leaders occasionally to plead for
what Europol could become, rather than to trumpet what it has already
achieved (see Bures’s chapter in this volume).
For example, in the wake of the terrorist attacks of 11 September 2001,
the Director of Europol at that time, Jürgen Storbeck, lamented the fact
that his organisation could be more effective in the fight against terror-
ism if only Member States would share more intelligence. Soon after the
terrorist attacks in London in 2005, the subsequent leader of Europol,
Max-Peter Ratzel, noted that ‘we need to combine better our work with
other European agencies, such as Eurojust or Joint Situation Centre
(SitCen). The flow of information between us must be more structured
and more dedicated’ (Laitner, 2005). Most recently, Europol’s current
director, Robert Wainwright, argued in 2009 that the European Police
Office should act as ‘a strong centre of operational support in the EU
for combating terrorism and international crime’ by becoming the ‘EU’s
key information centre in these areas’ (Vandystadt, 2009a).
In his work on EU CT policy, Oldrich Bures (2011) is pessimistic
about whether this can be achieved and has explained this in terms
160 Counter-terrorism and Intelligence in Europe
EU INTCEN (SitCen)
Another key institutional development regarding information-sharing
was the development of SitCen, which was created in 1999 within the
Council Secretariat under the authority of the Secretary-General of the
Council and High Representative for the Common Foreign and Security
Policy (CFSP). SitCen brought together analysts and foreign intelligence
officers from the Member States to support the EU’s crisis manage-
ment activities by providing around-the-clock monitoring and analysis
of regions and situations of interest. Under the Lisbon Treaty SitCen was
folded into the new European External Action Service, led by the High
Representative for Foreign Affairs. In 2012, it was reformed and renamed
the European Union Intelligence Analysis Centre (EU INTCEN).
In its early years, SitCen functioned mainly to support the EU’s
European Security and Defence policy, relied solely on open-source
intelligence and focused entirely on developments outside of the
Europe. Its role in CT began to evolve after the terrorist attacks of
11 September 2001, which led to the founding of its CT group and the
international exchange of sensitive information. However, the scope of
this information-sharing was limited because only seven EU Member
States had formal external intelligence agencies. Finally, in 2004, the
terrorist bombing in Madrid led to more profound changes, notably
the inclusion of officials from Member States’ domestic intelligence ser-
vices at SitCen, allowing attention to both internal and external threats
and information-sharing among analysts working on both (Argomaniz,
A Transatlantic Perspective 161
Leadership
In addition to bringing about changes in SitCen, the terrorist attacks
on Madrid on 11 March 2004 also prompted another significant insti-
tutional change regarding information-sharing in the EU, namely the
creation of the position of CTC. This post was originally created under
the authority of the Secretary General of the Council and High Repre-
sentative for Common Foreign and Security Policy and was originally
held by Gijs de Vries of the Netherlands. Compared to the executive
powers of the DNI, the EU’s ‘Mr Terror’, as he became known, has been
more of a ‘cheerleader’ than a powerful administrator.
More specifically, the CTC has been charged with encouraging Mem-
ber States to share more and better intelligence with each other in
the fight against terrorism, including sharing done through EU-level
institutions (Bures, 2011). This new office was also charged with mon-
itoring Member States’ compliance with CT legislation approved at
the EU level. This entailed monitoring whether EU legislative mea-
sures have been transposed into national law properly and on time
and then making periodic reports to the Council (Argomaniz, 2011,
p. 25). To date, the impact of the CTC on this has been limited,
as his influence has been largely restricted to ‘naming and shaming’
(Bures, 2011, p. 139). However, in recent years, the CTC has become
increasingly active in providing evaluations to Member States on the
terrorist threats at hand, as well as advocating for various kinds of policy
change.
In March 2007, de Vries resigned, citing personal reasons, though
it was widely believed to be related to his dissatisfaction with limited
authority of his position (European Report, 2007a). In fact, the naming
of his successor was delayed several months as the EU Member States
reconsidered the nature of the CTC position and who should fill the
post. It was not until September 2007 that Member States’ interior min-
isters agreed that ‘the coordinator should have a largely technical profile
and role and be particularly concerned with coordination, and bundling
of and pooling resources between member states and other authori-
ties’ (Agence France Presse, 2007). In the end, Member States wanted the
CTC to have a lower profile and play a behind-the-scenes role largely in
A Transatlantic Perspective 163
Brussels via the EU-level institutions, rather than in the Member States
(Bures, 2011, pp. 141–144).
To this end, the Member States agreed on Gilles de Kerchove to
fill the new post. He was previously director for police and customs
cooperation in the Council Secretariat’s Directorate General. In his first
exchange of views with the EP, de Kerchove noted his lack of power
on CT, including his limited budget. He was also not consulted by the
Commission before it presented a package of CT proposal in Novem-
ber 2007 (European Report, 2007b). Despite his limited authority, de
Kerchove has consistently used his leadership position to press for a
variety of enhancements to the EU’s CT strategy, including improve-
ments related to information-sharing. For example, in his first report to
Council pointed out several ongoing problems regarding the implemen-
tation of EU-level CT legislation, as well as deficiencies in the sharing of
information among CT bodies within Member States, which, in turn,
inhibits cooperation at the EU level (European Report, 2007c,d). Later,
while presenting a report to the JHA Council in November 2009, the
CTC included ‘information management’ among the key challenges for
the EU to deal with the enduring threat of terrorism – albeit a challenge
that also includes the task of ensuring proper data protection. Along
with his other suggestions in this regard, de Kerchove noted:
In his more recent biannual ‘discussion papers’ and reports to the Mem-
ber States, de Kerchove has not suggested the need for greater powers for
his position, though he has continued to emphasise particular kinds of
threats, especially those related to the radicalisation of individuals and
groups within Europe, cyber-security, transport and explosives. Con-
cerning information-sharing, the CTC has also promoted a number of
international exchanges with non EU states, especially the US, as well as
new, internal EU initiatives, such as new programmes of information-
sharing on passenger name record (PNR) data and terrorist finance
tracking. De Kerchove has also advocated the revision of the legal basis
164 Counter-terrorism and Intelligence in Europe
Information-sharing instruments
Along with changes involving institutions and leadership, a variety of
EU-level databases have been established or have been planned to help
collect and share information among national authorities to fight cross-
border crime and terrorism. Two of these will be discussed below in some
detail, namely the Schengen Information System (SIS) and the Europol’s
data systems. There are a variety of other systems that are either rela-
tively new or planned for implementation in the near term, namely the
Customs Information System (CIS) for smuggling data, Eurodac – the
database for asylum applicants – (see below) and the Visa Information
System (VIS) for visa applicants (see also Balzacq and Léonard’s chapter
in this volume). The two latter mechanisms contain biometric identifiers
to prevent multiple applications and the use of fraudulent documents.
In addition to these mechanisms, the EU is also planning to create
a biometric border entry and exit system that could also be involved
in information-sharing to fight cross-border crime and terrorism. First
conceived in 2008 and now planned for 2014 or 2015, the system will
operate on the same technical platform as the VIS and SIS II (see below)
and will be paired with a trusted traveller programme for non-EU citi-
zens who cross frequently in and out of the Schengen zone (Malhère,
2009; Vandystadt and Malhère, 2010; Smets, 2011). Along with its
databases, EU legislative measures have also been established to facilitate
the exchange of data among national authorities, such as is now done
via the so-called ‘Swedish framework decision’ and the Prüm decisions,
which will also be examined below. Regarding all of its databases and
information-sharing mechanisms, the EU faces the dual challenge of
ensuring the inter-linking of information systems while protecting both
integrity of ongoing criminal investigations and privacy of the persons
whose data is being stored and shared (see also Balzacq and Léonard’s
chapter in this volume).
1995 and was eventually incorporated into the body of EU law. However,
the history of the Schengen zone extends back to the mid-1980s, when
plans were already under way to perfect the EC’s burgeoning common
market. At the time, this was expected to exacerbate customs and immi-
gration delays at many border crossings, which was already a growing
problem.
Consequently, many Member States began considering an alternative,
based on the removal of internal controls and the development of com-
mon standards for the management of a shared external border. Built
on the 1984 Saarbrücken Agreement between France and Germany, the
Schengen Agreement was signed near Schengen, Luxembourg among
five EC states in 1985 and followed in 1990 by a more detailed con-
vention in 1990. The Schengen rules (acquis) were finally brought into
the EU’s acquis communautaire with the Amsterdam Treaty in 1999. Since
then, the Schengen zone has grown to include 22 EU states (not the UK,
Ireland, Cyprus, Bulgaria and Romania) and four non-EU states (Norway,
Iceland, Switzerland and Liechtenstein).
Along with facilitating passport-free travel, the Schengen acquis
also provides a legal basis for international police cooperation and
information-sharing. For example, police may continue surveillance of
a suspect if he/she moves to another Schengen state. Hot pursuit of
suspects across international borders is also permitted, but not arrests.
In both cases, national authorities must be contacted as soon as possible.
In addition, the Schengen acquis also encompasses the SIS, which is a
data bank that can be accessed by multiple law enforcement officials in
the Schengen countries. Although the UK and Ireland have chosen not
to participate in the passport-free zone, they have agreed to participate
in some of the crime-fighting provisions of the Schengen acquis, such
as the SIS. At the same time, in 2012, Bulgaria and Romania were still
trying to qualify for the passport-free zone, though they have belonged
to the SIS since November 2010.
The SIS contains ‘alerts’ of names and information about missing
persons and wanted criminals/suspects, as well as a registry of lost or
stolen weapons, automobiles, currency and identity documents. Each
Schengen Member State decides which data are to be uploaded and
updated, as well as how and when this is done. Police and border offi-
cials can search the database and get either ‘hit’ (match) or ‘no hit’ in
response. For example, hits on searches in the SIS can allow police to
match a name with a stolen weapon or vehicle. This information can
then be supplemented by data that can be provided by a network of
human law enforcement contacts among participating states, known
166 Counter-terrorism and Intelligence in Europe
Europol
Europol’s core function is to facilitate information-sharing, and it
accomplishes this through a variety of means. One way is through
Member States’ Europol Liaison Officers (ELOs), which are based at
Europol in The Hague and utilise defined points of contact at the
‘National Units’ within each EU country. Europol also has liaison and
information-sharing agreements with non-EU entities, such as the US,
Iceland, Norway and Interpol.
In addition, through its staff of analysts and experts, Europol can pro-
duce analyses and threat assessments on organised crime and terrorism,
which are then provided to investigators in the Member States. Europol
can and sometimes does play a role in coordinating multinational joint
investigations, increasingly through ‘joint investigation teams’ (JITs),
but its staff members have no powers to conduct criminal investigations
in Member States without their consent. Nor can Europol officers make
arrests.
Europol also utilises its ‘Information System’ (IS), which has been
operational since 2005 and contains a registry of convictions and crim-
inal suspects regarding serious crimes. These data must be inputted by
the Member States, but analyses based on these data can be prepared by
Europol’s staff (see below). Along with this, Europol produces and main-
tains a database of Analysis Work Files, which are prepared groups of
national ELOs and Europol staff (Deflem, 2006). Access to these files is
limited to the participants of the group that has produced them, and the
wider dissemination of these data is ultimately controlled by the Mem-
ber States that contributed the data in question. There is also an index
system for the Analysis Work Files, which can be consulted or searched
by all ELOs. However, as noted, the dissemination or operational use
of the Analysis Work Files themselves can be limited by the Member
States that originally provided the data. This is done to protect sources,
investigative methods and ongoing investigations.
To date, the main challenge faced by Europol is the willingness of
Member States to share more high-quality criminal data with staff
members and the EIS. As already discussed, this is especially the case
regarding CT, which remains an area in which Europol performs in a
fairly limited capacity. Since 2007, however, Europol has played a some-
what more prominent role on terrorism by producing an annual ‘EU
Terrorism Situation and Trend Report’. Nevertheless, this is merely a
168 Counter-terrorism and Intelligence in Europe
In this regard, the Hague Programme pointed out that the European
Council was ‘convinced that strengthening freedom, security and jus-
tice requires an innovative approach to the cross-border exchange of
law-enforcement information. The mere fact that information crosses
borders should no longer be relevant’ (Council of the European Union,
2004, p. 27, Section 2.1).
The Hague Programme invited the Commission to implement the
principle of availability in new legislation that would also uphold
a number of guidelines intended to ensure that information-sharing
would compromise criminal investigations or civil liberties. Although
the programme emphasised the use of use of new technologies, it also
stressed that existing EU-level databases should be better utilised and
made interoperable – rather than the creation of new systems. The
Hague Programme called for the availability principle to be in effect
with the start of 2008.
In mid-2005, with The Hague Programme in effect, the Swedish
proposal on information-sharing from June 2004 was still under con-
sideration by the Council and EP. Meanwhile, the Commission was
also preparing its own proposal to promote information-sharing. By this
time, however, the sense of urgency created by the Madrid attacks had
already started to wane, and the prospects for rapid progress on CT mea-
sures were not bright. It was at this point that the terrorist bombings
in London of 7 July 2005 provided renewed impetus for progress on CT
in the EU, especially as the latest attacks came near the start of Britain’s
Presidency of the Council.
Thus, by the autumns of 2005 there was progress on several fronts.
First, a proposed framework decision to require IT companies to retain
and share personal data for criminal investigations was back in discus-
sion after months of dormancy following its initial endorsement by
the European Council after the Madrid attacks and formal proposal in
April 2004. Second, the Commission published its own proposal on
information-sharing in October 2005. Third, ‘the Swedish proposal’ as
it had become known, finally received attention at the ministerial level
(i.e. JHA Council). Finally, in December of 2005, the European Coun-
cil approved the EU’s new Counter-Terrorism Strategy, which, under its
pillar of action entitled ‘pursue’ included the need to implement the
availability principle (Council of the European Union, 2005). At about
the same time, there was agreement in the Council on both the ‘data
retention’ framework decision, formally adopted in March 2006, and on
a general approach to the Swedish proposal, which was not formally
adopted until December 2006.
170 Counter-terrorism and Intelligence in Europe
there are the political dynamics of the EU itself concerning its ongoing
efforts to improve its AFSJ. Second, there are factors that pertain to the
particular issue of promoting better information-sharing among a wide
variety of law enforcement and security agencies in its Member States.
Regarding the first set of variables, the long-delayed reform of the
EU’s treaties has significantly impacted policy-making on information-
sharing. Until recently, this policy domain was handled as a third pillar
matter, affording little actual influence by the EP and involving con-
sensual decision-making in the Council. However, under the Lisbon
Treaty, the legislative process for initiatives on ‘the collection, storage,
processing, analysis and exchange of relevant information’ falls under
the ‘ordinary legislative procedure’ (Article 87, paragraph 2a, TFEU)
(Kaunert, 2010, p. 186).
As has been emphasised by academics and practitioners alike, this
change allows the EP to have significant influence over EU policy
making on information-sharing, just as with most areas of police coop-
eration (though still not all areas). Although the EP’s political groups do
not speak with one voice, the EP has been, in general, been quite vocal
on issues connected with the protection of civil liberties and the need
for oversight regarding a wide variety of issues that have come before its
Committee on Civil Liberties, Justice and Home Affairs (LIBE) (see also
Hillebrand’s chapter in this volume). Indeed, the earliest indication of
the EP’s new influence on information-sharing came in early 2010 with
its high-profile rejection of the EU’s original agreement with the US to
share financial data from SWIFT. Moving forward, the challenge for the
EP will be to shape legislation on information-sharing, while avoiding
being viewed by citizens as impeding progress security issues, which are
important to voters in Europe. In short, the EP’s role will certainly be
more significant than ever before as EU policy-making on information-
sharing seeks to strike the right balance between data protection and
privacy on the one hand, and the implementation of the availability
principle on the other. Moreover, because of the EP’s attention to data
protection, the Commission, Council and CTC will have proceed care-
fully should they try to move away from a policy of availability by
stealth and towards a more overt promotion of information-sharing.
In addition to affecting the role of the EP, the Lisbon Treaty has
also brought about other changes that impact EU policy making on
information-sharing. For example, majority voting in the Council is
now possible on this issue, which could expedite progress. Despite this,
the norm of consensual decision-making will likely continue in the
Council when it comes to the sensitive area of information-sharing,
174 Counter-terrorism and Intelligence in Europe
of greater information will not be easy. Yet, most difficult of all will
be the fashioning a new culture of information-sharing in the EU.
Beyond the creation of new instruments, the notion that data and
intelligence on transnational crime and terrorism ought to be shared
internationally must be further developed among the law enforcement
and security agencies of the EU if it is to achieve its stated goals on
information-sharing.
Acknowledgement
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186 Counter-terrorism and Intelligence in Europe
p. 12; Gardner, 2006, p. 30; Jane’s, 2006; Roberts, 2006, pp. 135–138;
Sims, 2006, p. 195; Svendsen, 2008a, pp. 129–144, 2008b, pp. 661–678,
2012; Aldrich, 2009a, pp. 889–902, 2011b).
Hand-in-glove has been a similarly burgeoning accountability and
oversight deficit (Müller-Wille, 2006; Roberts, 2006, p. 139; Aldrich,
2009b; Born et al., 2011). This is concerning and matters to us all, what-
ever our exact status. Indeed, ‘profound implications’ (Rudner, 2002)
have been starkly witnessed during the early 21st century. For example,
prominent episodes of US ‘extraordinary renditions’, ‘intensive inter-
rogations’, and ‘torture’ allegations have emerged publicly, and their
‘fallout’ has had a significant and ongoing impact in several individ-
ual European countries, as well as regionally, across Europe as a whole
(Grey, 2006; Roberts, 2007; Egeland and Aguirre, 2009; Media sources,
2009–2011; Porteous and Inkster, 2010).
Furthermore, while over recent years much scholarship has been
undertaken concentrating on the broader and closely overlapping
theme of ‘security cooperation’ in Europe, particularly with a strong
emphasis on ‘governance’ concerns, considerably less has been writ-
ten about the main focus of this chapter, namely the more specific
area of ‘intelligence cooperation’ in Europe (Smith, 2003; Jones, 2007;
Kirchner and Sperling, 2007; Giegerich, 2010). Different approaches
to the ‘problems’ encountered also exist, such as the contrastable
law enforcement/security-dominated methodology of ‘see and strike’
and the intelligence methodology of ‘wait and watch’ (Svendsen,
2010a, p. 34).
With the analysis advanced below, this chapter now aims to better
contribute towards more fully addressing this observed ‘paucity’ in the
overall subject literature. This is together with better highlighting some
of the analytical complexities involved in, and during the course of, that
addressing. In summary, building on the foundations of the existing
scholarship, this chapter aims to perform the reflective functional role of
being a comprehensive ‘introduction’ to this subject, with the analysis it
presents being primarily connective and explorative in nature. Enduring
reference utility similarly intends to be advanced.
Accordingly, as it seeks to better bridge discernible ‘gaps’, comprehen-
sive observation is one of the main tasks undertaken throughout this
chapter. Beginning with an exploration of the theme of ‘intelligence and
Europe’ and its witnessed increased ‘regionalisation’ (and what is meant
by that process), this chapter continues to examine the vexing question
of how recent intelligence cooperation in Europe can be best evaluated,
with the key structures facilitating contemporary European intelligence
188 Counter-terrorism and Intelligence in Europe
A brief literature survey suggests that earlier, around the end of the
20th century, the issue of intelligence vis-à-vis Europe was arguably
more overlooked (Gal-Or, 1985, pp. 74–76). It was also more under-
studied – albeit an imbalance beginning to be addressed more seriously
around 2000 (Villadsen, 2000; Baker, c. 2001; O’Brien, 2001). During
2000–2001, there were also several debates surrounding the contro-
versial European Parliamentary Inquiry into the UKUSA arrangement’s
ECHELON system (Economist, 2000; Jane’s, 2000; Richelson, 2000;
Keefe, 2005, pp. 288–289). By 2012, the subject of ‘intelligence and
Europe’ is now more effectively addressed in the literature (as the
collection of essays in this book reflects), and the trend of closely fol-
lowing behind the curve of developments and events occurring in the
‘real-world’ continues (Müller-Wille, 2004; Walsh, 2006, 2009, 2010;
Fägersten, 2008). These developments can be readily characterised. Gen-
erally, we are witnessing greater intelligence cooperation – even if
admittedly intelligence cooperation is mixed, and can be regarded as
emerging haphazardly and incrementally in places (Daun and Jäger,
2006). Indeed, today, collectively this greater intelligence cooperation
is taking place on a sizeable enough scale in Europe to allow the discus-
sion of trends pertaining to the increased regionalisation of intelligence.
A form of regional intelligence coverage exists for all participants.
Several relevant insights can equally be drawn from other closely
related bodies of scholarship. This includes from the literature focussed
on the themes of ‘regionalism’ and ‘regionalisation’ in the overlap-
ping security context, as well as from the literature concentrating
on the broader theme of (general) ‘international cooperation’. These
more generally concerned sources offer added value in further help-
ing us to extend our understanding of the developments undergone
in this more specific realm, namely, in this chapter, in relation to the
cooperative intelligence interactions under way in Europe (Griffiths
and O’Callaghan, 2002, pp. 273–275; Snyder, 2008; OSCE, 2009,
2011; Bergenäs, 2010; Mendelsohn, 2010; Norrlof, 2010; Zartman and
Touval, 2010).
Indeed, Swedish scholar Björn Hettne’s ‘new regional theory’ is most
instructive. This is particularly where Australian scholar Craig A. Snyder
summarises it as arguing that ‘the development of regionalism is depen-
dent on the support of the regional great power(s), the extent of
reciprocity that exists in the relations of the states in the region, and
the level of strategic reassurance that exists among these states’ (Snyder,
2008, p. 227). Preliminary observations soon emerge. Unsurprisingly,
particularly in the wake of the deeply shocking 11 September 2001
190 Counter-terrorism and Intelligence in Europe
strategic issues. As the UK ISC report noted, ‘[a]ll of the [UK intelligence]
Agencies contributed to discussions which resulted in the formulation
of the EU Counter-Terrorism Action Plan, which draws strongly on the
UK’s CONTEST model’ (the UK’s 2003 Counter-Terrorism Strategy) (ISC,
2006, pp. 28–29, para. 101).
More peripherally, transatlantic-spanning arrangements, in which
several European countries are involved, perhaps could also be argued as
sitting at least on the fringe of this category (NATO, 2007, 2010a). These
latter arrangements include the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation
(NATO) and its own plethora of variously overlapping intelligence-
associated arrangements – including, with NATO members participat-
ing to different extents, the NATO Special Committee, the US Joint
Analysis Center (JAC) and the NATO-supporting ‘Intelligence Fusion
Centre’, based at US EUCOM (European Command) at Royal Air Force
(RAF) Molesworth in Cambridgeshire, UK (NATO, 2006, 2010b, 2011;
NATO SHAPE, 2006a, 2006b; UK MoD, 2006; Tigner, 2009) – and then
there is the International Special Training Centre (ISTC) for Special
Operations Forces, located in Germany (ISTC, 2008; Finlan, 2009, p. 131;
Svendsen, 2010a, pp. 79, 83, 90).
Open-source intelligence (OSINT) partnerships also exist, such as the
‘International Open Source Working Group’ (IOSWG), which includes
several European nations, notably Germany, Denmark, the Netherlands,
the UK, Italy, Austria, Sweden, Norway, France and Belgium, as well as
there being more ‘exclusive’ European OSINT partnerships, including
the ‘Budapest Club’, established in 2007 (ODNI, 2007; Dyèvre, 2008;
Rettman, 2011a).
Together with all of these arrangements, operating alongside are the
increasingly internationally connected European countries’ national
terrorism threat analysis centres, including: the Joint Terrorism Anal-
ysis Centre (JTAC) in the UK, the ‘Centre for Terrorism Analysis’ in
Denmark, and the ‘Coordination Center’ in Germany, which act as
intelligence ‘fusion centres’ (Miko and Froehlich, 2004; Tebbit, 2006;
Reuters, 2010; AP, 2011b; TL, 2011a). Furthermore, as Dutch intelligence
scholar Cees Wiebes has reportedly observed, in parallel there exists
a degree of burgeoning intra-European signals intelligence (SIGINT)
cooperation, occurring at least among some select countries: ‘Since the
end of the 1990s [. . .] cooperation between the monitoring services
of France, Germany and the Netherlands has grown and the coun-
tries exchange “Sigint” daily. Together with Denmark and Belgium, a
“Group of Five” is slowly taking shape’ (Fidler, 2004; Rudner, 2004;
Cody, 2010). Meanwhile, focussed on issues such as money laundering,
194 Counter-terrorism and Intelligence in Europe
He continued:
Along the lines presented above, the overall prevailing wider trends con-
cerning intelligence cooperation in Europe collectively point towards
the increased ‘regionalisation of intelligence’. This is despite, within
that regional framework, the overlapping international intelligence liai-
son developments over time occurring in a mixed manner, in both their
operation and evolution, and varying in their ‘specialness’. This mixture
effectively spans the full spectrum of being, at times, more haphazard
and ad hoc (for instance, work being conducted more case-by-case), as
well as, at other times, being more regularised, and with developments
occurring more systematically and incrementally (e.g. as seen with the
EU SitCen) (Lindblom, 1959, 1979; Gibson, 2005; Rasmussen, 2006;
Coker, 2009). Variations in nature exist.
Borrowing the reported words of the former Director General of the
British Security Service (MI5), Dame Eliza Manningham-Buller (2002–
2007), the discernible overall regionalisation trends can be evaluated as
being essentially on ‘a continuum with expansion’ (ISC, 2004, pp. 22,
para. 74). This assessment stands even if you adopt a sceptic’s stance.
Admittedly, over time, due to the potent mixture of factors involved,
these trends have not had a smooth development, and unevenness
therefore continues to be effectively reflected. For instance, time-
consuming and problematic trade-offs have been evident – including
the ‘secrecy-sharing dilemma’ and the ‘constraints’ somewhat imposed
by the ever-present counter-intelligence and security anxieties, shown
where strictly sanitised ‘information’ rather than ‘intelligence’ per se
features (as discussed with regard to the EU, above).
Moreover, due to their differing natures, the intelligence liaison
relationships in Europe are also clearly of varying degrees of ‘exclu-
sivity’. At times, they are somewhat differently focussed, together with
200 Counter-terrorism and Intelligence in Europe
Conclusions
processes, for not too dissimilar reasons, occur over time both within and
across the three different categories.
In our contemporary era, this discernible mode of regional intelli-
gence cooperation has been focussed mainly on the key issue of counter-
terrorism – although other regionalised-to-globalised security con-
cerns, such as organised crime and WMD proliferation, together with
peacekeeping and crisis management considerations, are simultaneously
present to a considerable extent. This occurs primarily due to regional
intelligence and security reach continuing to be extended into ‘newer’
realms of activity as demands, requirements, and strategic and opera-
tional remits all become widened (Van Duin, 1993; Boin et al., 2005).
Closely associated with broader globalisation trends apparent in
international affairs, the ‘regionalisation of intelligence’ developments
charted throughout this chapter are essentially on ‘a continuum with
expansion’. Moreover, notwithstanding the observation that details and
specifics – as well as the low and micro levels of experience and activity –
matter significantly in the intelligence world, the overall trends are not
ambiguous (Svendsen, 2008a,b, 2012; Aldrich, 2009a,b).
However, as seen when generalising, while the trends may not be
ambiguous in themselves – especially in terms of more tangible widen-
ing and structural developments – how far they precisely extend and
endure – particularly in terms of less tangible deepening and cultural
(including philosophical) developments – are more debatable issues.
Concerns such as these will continue to be hotly contested into the
future, and no easy answers present themselves. A ‘complex co-existence
plurality’ of developments is encountered.
Further conclusions are apparent. While significant caveats remain,
suggesting that distinct operational parameters and limitations for all
the arrangements continue to feature, the important overlap of the
various arrangements in Europe allows them to perform in a more
empowering than hindering manner. The limitations do not overwhelm
the whole ‘system’. Intelligence cooperation trends within Europe can
therefore be generally evaluated positively as being essentially on
an upward trajectory, even if that trajectory is caveated (IISS, 2009,
pp. 35–36).
The essence is that the whole is greater than the sum of its parts, and
generally the overall ‘system’ that does currently exist appears to work
substantially on that basis. Already present, at their least, as a reasonably
adequate starting foundation on which further European intelligence
cooperation developments can be built, these trends now need to con-
tinue to be better harnessed into the future. Seizing and maintaining a
On a ‘Continuum with Expansion’? 203
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215
216 Counter-terrorism and Intelligence in Europe
and other countries in the region in the 1970s. In 1968, Harold Wool
(Wool, 1968, p. 117) argued that the retention of trained specialists by
the armed services was emerging as a ‘chronic problem’, and in 1971,
Morris Janowitz (Janowitz, 1971, p. xxiii) argued that the practice of
having contractors performing logistics and supply roles was fostering a
‘tendency to assign uniformed personnel to purely military or combat
functions’.
This brief exploration confirms that trends towards the privatisa-
tion of security have gained momentum since the 1990s. However,
the exploration also shows that there are other issues that we need to
take into consideration in order to explain more accurately the roots of
the phenomenon, which predates the end of the Cold War. In particu-
lar, I believe it is important to examine certain structural components
within the state leading to a recasting of the state monopoly of vio-
lence premised on systematic contractor support. This chapter follows
this line of enquiry by emphasising the role public management has
played in this transformation, while, at the same time, reflecting on the
evolving nature of state intelligence.
Firstly in the chapter, I outline the evolution of public managerial
practices over the last few decades. This overview throws new light
on the origins of the policy agenda that has systematically called for
a greater reliance on defence contractors, Private Military Companies
(PMCs), and intelligence firms for the satisfaction of state defence and
security. Secondly, I argue that the notion of ‘security partnerships’ is
helpful to synthesise the logic behind the contemporary privatisation of
security. Thirdly, I explore the implementation of intelligence functions
through the security partnerships model. Lastly, I elaborate on distinc-
tive technical issues affecting the new management of defence and secu-
rity through security partnerships and examine implications of the first
global recession of the 21st century for the evolution of the model. As a
country at the forefront of trends towards the privatisation of security
and thus setting standards of European transcendence, the trajectory of
the United Kingdom (UK) is used as a case study in the chapter.
Air Force and the Royal Navy. Similarly, the United Kingdom Mili-
tary Flying Training System (UKMFTS) is a project aimed at creating
a tri-service organisation focusing on the flying training of the British
forces. UKMFTS will be handled by a Training System Partner (TSP) and
implemented through a PFI. At the time this chapter was being writ-
ten, Ascent, a joint venture between VT Group and Lockheed Martin,
was named as the preferred bidder for the TSP contract. Babcock Inter-
national Group and Carillion are in charge of a security partnership
handling the training of British military engineers. Incorporating R&D
from the computer game industry and adapting it to military require-
ments, the battlefield training simulation Virtual Battlespace 2 (VBS2 )
introduces British servicemen to the use of lethal force in simulated sce-
narios in Iraq, Afghanistan or elsewhere where they might be deployed
(Sherwood, 2011), and so on. The whole British defence and security
apparatus is now interlaced and held together by an intricate web of
security partnerships.
‘the armed forces have both military and non-military tasks for which
they often use the same equipment’ (European Commission, 2007,
p. 14). Corroborating this European Union (EU)-wide issue, the 2005
UK Defence Industrial Strategy further noted the interchangeability of
intelligence capabilities used in the homeland security environment
with those applied in the military field, which this White Paper argued
‘reinforces the importance of the counter-terrorism sector, and pro-
vides greater opportunities for both industry and MOD to become more
cost-effective’ (MOD, 2005, para. B.10). Whereas counter-terrorism and
intelligence are not exactly the same activities, the two are interdepen-
dent and sometimes used indistinctly in the speech acts underpinning
the securitisation of the homeland security environment in the UK.
As boundaries between defence and homeland security break down,
so too does the analysis of the roles played by private sector firms in
partnership with the state and of the tangible benefits society experi-
ences from their broadening use. Indeed, the problems inherent in the
modelling of security partnerships for intelligence are just a prelude to
the various issues that will permeate the study of intelligence as we
move further into the 21st century. Meanwhile, we should not loose
sight of the key points that security partnerships for intelligence are a
patent reality and that their use will only grow. While this type of part-
nerships engenders distinctive complexities, intelligence outsourcing is
also affected by more generic technical problems.
Conclusion
As the conclusion to this chapter was being written, Europe has found
itself at a historical juncture. In Norway, on 22 July 2011, a bomb blast
in central Oslo and a shooting rampage at an island youth camp claimed
the lives of 77 people. Anders Behring Breivik, the self-confessed perpe-
trator of the terror attacks, failed to match the post-9/11 securitisation
script. He was not an Islamist fundamentalist, but a Norwegian far-
right sympathiser with connections to like-minded people elsewhere
in Europe, including the UK. In the UK, early in August 2011 unex-
pected and extensive rioting in metropolitan areas of England sent
ripples throughout society. The extensive criminal damage caused dur-
ing the riots matched that which we could have imagined occurring
as a result of large-scale and synchronised terrorist attacks. In a matter
of weeks, the securitisation focus shifted away from conceived priority
threats.
This is not to say that the common threats and challenges established
in the European Security Strategy (see the first two chapters in this vol-
ume) ceased to matter – for example, terrorism, serious and organised
crime, and natural and man-made disasters. However, the threat those
two events posed to European security found a better answer in between
the lines of common threats and challenges noted in the strategy rather
than the rehearsed speech acts. Discussing the consequences of those
two events falls outside the scope of this chapter. Yet, it seems prudent
to keep them in mind while reflecting on the UK experience managing
state defence and homeland security through security partnerships.
226 Counter-terrorism and Intelligence in Europe
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10
Conclusion – European Security,
Terrorism and Intelligence:
Assessing the Path of
Development
Alex MacKenzie and Kamil Zwolski
In 2003, the European Security Strategy (ESS) explicitly stated that the
development of globalisation had led to ‘European dependence – and
so vulnerability – on an interconnected infrastructure in transport,
energy, information and other fields’ (European Council, 2003). This
statement demonstrates that Europe is now closely economically inte-
grated and, by implication, European Union (EU) Member States must
take coordinated internal security measures commensurate with exist-
ing threats. The ESS outlined five threats that pose risks to Europe:
terrorism, the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction, regional
conflicts, state failure and organised crime. In setting out a European
strategy, EU Member States recognised that there are certain shared
threats that pose risks across the European continent. Consequently,
as this book has charted, EU Member States have responded vigor-
ously to a number of threats (Zwolski, 2011a,b, 2012a,b; Zwolski and
Kaunert, 2011). We perceive the various security arrangements that have
emerged since 2001 (in particular) to be indicative of a broader trend of
‘Europeanisation’ of internal security. The fact that EU Member States
also managed to arrive at an Internal Security Strategy (ISS) in 2010 sug-
gests, firstly, that European integration in security matters has proven
beneficial to all involved and, secondly, that EU Member States share
a desire to deepen their cooperation (Council of the European Union,
2010).
Over time, EU Member States have enhanced their cooperation on
matters of internal security; however, in this process of integration in
security matters, a lack of overall strategic vision can be discerned. It has
229
230 Conclusion
been argued that the EU has reacted to crises and decisions have been
taken on an incremental basis (following the terrorist attacks on Madrid
in 2004, e.g.) (Argomaniz, 2009a), which has led to a plethora of ini-
tiatives and strategies, but it is not at all evident where this process is
heading or what the ultimate goal is (Schroeder, 2012). What is very
clear is that the EU has become more important in matters of internal
security over the past ten years; that European institutions have carved
out an important role for themselves in European security, which is set
to grow further with the Stockholm Programme and the new arrange-
ments introduced by the Lisbon Treaty (Kaunert, 2007, 2010a,b,c); and
that there are further challenges that the EU must overcome if it wishes
to enhance its role further. Ultimately, this conclusion reflects on how
this increased role for the EU has been created, the prospects for future
developments at the EU level and the conditions necessary to achieve a
more comprehensive and coherent ESS in the future. It is clear that the
trajectory of European security matters is very much in the direction of
further integration, which explains why this volume is both timely and
important.
draw out some of the issues that have led to this transformation –
including the role of terrorism; the changes made to the EU’s architec-
ture by the Lisbon Treaty; the influence of external actors, particularly
the United States (US); and the increase in the role of the EU institu-
tions in European security, both through treaty change and their own
efforts.
It is evident that the EU held a very limited role in European security
prior to 9/11. European aspirations were evident at the aforementioned
European Council meeting at Tampere and through the creation of
the fully-fledged Europol, both occurring in 1999. However, the end
products of the meeting in Tampere were vague commitments and
aspirations, with little chance of any of the measures being initiated.
The events of 9/11 and international terrorism more generally changed
this. Edwards and Meyer state in unequivocal terms that ‘[t]he gover-
nance of the European Union has been changed through its responses
to international terrorism’ (Edwards and Meyer, 2008). Following 9/11,
Zimmermann emphasises that over 150 measures were included in the
‘Anti-Terrorism Roadmap’, which is evidence of how seriously Member
States viewed the threat of terrorism at the time, as well as their desire
to show solidarity with the US and demonstrate the measures that they
were prepared to take to combat the threat (Zimmermann, 2006). The
most high-profile measure to have been introduced by the EU is almost
certainly the European Arrest Warrant (EAW). Although its use is not
restricted to terrorism only, this was a step forward for the Union on
the basis that extradition was simplified to become surrender and there
is now mutual recognition between the legal systems of the Member
States. In short, we can conclude that international terrorism has prob-
ably been the single most important threat to have had an impact upon
the Union and has led to a significant number of actions.
Yet, this does not mean that other threats have been ignored; how-
ever, terrorism, perhaps more so than any other threat, has had a lasting
and profound influence upon the EU. The activities following 9/11 have
led EU Member States to see value in cooperation and to expand their
activities. In addition, there are threats that have been identified as
being linked to terrorism, such as drugs and organised crime, some of
which have been seen as emanating from North Africa and South Asia in
particular (Hutchinson and O’Malley, 2007; Marret, 2008; De Kerchove,
2009; Gibert, 2009; Interpol, 2010). Afghanistan is known to supply over
90 per cent of the world’s heroin, including Europe’s, and Al Qaeda in
the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM) has been involved in criminal activities for
fundraising purposes in European countries. From this, it is evident that
threats from external sources have internal consequences. Therefore, the
232 Conclusion
focus on CFSP/ESDP gives the false impression that security matters are
almost always dealt with through intergovernmental methods, when, in
fact, the EU is showing that the Member States have integrated on secu-
rity matters and are now pursuing certain issues in this area. Chapter 3
has examined the extent to which the EU could be considered a com-
prehensive police actor, discussing how the EU has responded to threats;
how Europol’s role in security matters has been enhanced since it was
created in 1999; and some policing missions that the EU has undertaken
outside its borders. Because the literature on EU policing has focused
heavily upon dividing the internal from the external and has looked at
certain limited aspects of the EU’s policing role, this chapter has filled
a gap in the literature by providing a more comprehensive analysis of
the EU’s broader policing role. It has shown that the internal and exter-
nal aspects of security are now intertwined and must be acted on in a
coordinated manner. In sum, Rozée has added empirical substance to
the concept of actorness and has demonstrated that the EU is becoming
a more important actor not only in Europe, but also further afield.
The book has then turned to counter-terrorism and its role in driv-
ing the process of European integration in security matters, with a focus
on counter-terrorism and police cooperation in the next two chapters.
In Chapter 4, Bures has examined the role of Europol in the EU’s ‘fight
against terror’. He has demonstrated that, although Europol’s security
role has increased somewhat over the past few years, it is still hamstrung
by a lack of trust between the Member States and the limited powers that
it has received. Furthermore, Bures has pointed out that there are exter-
nal networks that Member States prefer to use rather than Europol, such
as those with the US intelligence services, because EU Member States are
reluctant to jeopardise these traditional ties. Hillebrand has continued
the discussion of counter-terrorism and policing in Chapter 5, focus-
ing once more on Europol. She has identified concerns about policing
network structures in Europe, in particular the difficulties inherent to
exercising parliamentary scrutiny. She has put forward a strong case for
improved parliamentary scrutiny of European policing and has exam-
ined possible options for the EP that could be pursued in future in
order to enhance scrutiny. Both Bures and Hillebrand have shown how
Europol has become more active in EU counter-terrorism and inter-
nal security more generally, while police forces cooperate more actively
across the EU than they did previously. However, they have also iden-
tified problems of coordination and democratic accountability, which
must be addressed if the Union intends to progress further in security
cooperation.
236 Conclusion
With the following chapter, the book has then moved to consid-
ering the issue of counter-terrorism and intelligence cooperation in
Europe. In Chapter 6, Balzacq and Léonard have examined information-
sharing in the EU by focusing on the development of two of the EU
internal security databases, namely Eurodac and the Visa Information
System. In particular, they have examined the question of the access
by the law enforcement community to these databases, which turns
these databases into what they call ‘securitisation tools’. Occhipinti has
expanded on the issue of information-sharing in Chapter 7 by exam-
ining the development of the ‘availability’ principle and looking at the
EU’s efforts to improve information-sharing for the purposes of fight-
ing crime and terrorism. He has shown that there are several initiatives
under way in the EU to do this and that there are possibilities that vari-
ous databases may be linked together at some point in the future, which
once more demonstrates the EU’s increasing importance in something
as integral to national security and sovereignty as intelligence. Svendsen
has argued in Chapter 8 that, across and beyond the EU, there has been
an increasing ‘regionalisation of intelligence’, which has generally been
crisis driven as terrorist events in particular have occurred on European
soil. This chapter has highlighted the haphazard and non-uniform man-
ner in which increased intelligence cooperation has occurred in Europe.
Significant caveats remain regarding the EU’s increased role in intelli-
gence matters, but there are clearly movements towards an ever more
elaborate and complex web of intelligence-sharing arrangements in
Europe, even if such arrangements sometimes overlap. Finally, Chapter 9
by Ortiz has considered the increasing privatisation of the military and
security more generally, examining the influence of New Public Man-
agement (NPM), particularly the role of Private Military Companies
(PMCs) and intelligence firms. This chapter has notably examined possi-
ble future scenarios for the relationship between the public and private
spheres of defence and the consequences for the organisation of state
defence and security in the years to come, including for combating
terrorism.
From the chapters in this volume, it is clear that we can see a growing
role for the EU in European internal security, which has ranged from
police cooperation to information-sharing. Security cooperation in the
EU has come a long way since 9/11. However, there are at least three
issues of concern that must be overcome for the EU to make further
progress in future. First of all, it is of some concern that developments
have often been crisis driven – therefore meaning that events have cre-
ated ‘windows of opportunity’ for measures that may have been difficult
Conclusion 237
(Börzel, 2005). Even with the Lisbon Treaty, the areas of security within
the CSDP have conspicuously resisted significant integration, and this
appears likely to remain the case for the foreseeable future.
Despite this progress, there remain other obstacles to the EU’s security
role. Most noticeably, the Eurozone’s sovereign debt crisis has shaken
the very core of the European project and made both EU Member States
and the EU institutions focus on surviving the crisis, placing many
other issues, namely some internal security matters, onto the back-
burner. Perhaps most noticeably, the UK, one of the real drivers of
cooperation in security matters in Europe (despite its peculiar position
in JHA), appears to be considering the possibility of a referendum on EU
membership, which could have a significant impact upon further inte-
gration in security matters. Even so, there are several possibilities that
are still progressing (albeit slowly) behind the scenes of the EU’s current
existential crisis.
For instance, it was mentioned earlier that the EU was moving towards
introducing an EU PNR and an EU TFTP. With regard to an EU PNR, the
European Commission first presented a framework decision to establish
an EU PNR system in the months following the conclusion of the EU–
US PNR agreement in 2007 as part of their counter-terrorism package
(Pawlak, 2009a). A revised version of the proposal was subsequently pre-
sented by the European Commission in January 2009 (Pawlak, 2009a).
Following further discussions, the Commission published a new pro-
posal for a directive on EU PNR in February 2011. However, it was
criticised by the Article 29 Working Party, which ‘considers that the
necessity of an EU PNR system has not yet been proven and the mea-
sures proposed are not in line with the proportionality principle, in
particular as the system envisages the collection and retention of all
data on all travellers on all flights’ (Article 29 Data Protection Working
Party, 2011, p. 8). In other words, there is progress behind the scenes,
but there still exist tensions between civil liberties and data protection
and security, which must be overcome if the EU is to develop its role
further in security matters.
Progress has also been made on an EU TFTP (referred to as a European
‘TFTS’ [Terrorist Finance Tracking System] in official documents) fol-
lowing its appearance in the EP’s Resolution of 17 September 2009
and its subsequent insertion into the second EU–US SWIFT agreement
(European Parliament, 2009; European Union, 2010; MacKenzie, 2012).
In July 2011, the Commission presented several options for an EU
TFTP in its Communication to the EP and the Council (European Com-
mission, 2011). The adoption of an EU TFTP would prove to be a
Conclusion 239
[a]s a Union of 25 [now 27] states with over 450 million people
producing a quarter of the world’s GNP, and with a wide range
of instruments at its disposal, the European Union is inevitably a
global player . . . . The increasing convergence of European interests
and the strengthening of mutual solidarity of the EU makes us a more
credible and effective actor. Europe should be ready to share in the
responsibility for global security and in building a better world.
240 Conclusion
At the time that it was written, in 2003, this statement could have been
seen as bravado because the EU was not thought to be making a signifi-
cant contribution to global security, but it is interesting to note that the
EU had aspirations towards this goal. However, it is now evident that
the EU has become a security actor internally and externally. On the
internal side, the EU itself now recognises that it has a role, which is
demonstrated in the EU Internal Security Strategy of 2010:
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242 Conclusion
accountability, 65, 80, 81, 90, 97, 102, 152, 154, 156, 161, 164, 165, 166,
104, 105, 107, 112, 116, 117, 176, 168, 169, 174, 175, 179, 198, 235
187, 235 Bulgaria, 165
aeroplane security, see air security Bush, George Walker (1946), 146–50,
Afghanistan, 1, 23, 51, 219, 220, 223, 176
224, 231
Africa, 21, 23, 137, 224, 231, 239 Canada, 190, 232, 239
AFSJ, 18, 103, 104, 110, 112, 113, 117, CBRN, 101
143, 144, 154–8, 168, 173, 178, Central Asia, 137
230, 233, 234 CEPOL, 161, 180
agencies, 9, 10, 18, 41, 51, 52, 54, CFSP, 8, 9, 29, 160, 194, 198, 234, 235
65–8, 72–5, 79–86, 90, 91, 100,
chemical, biological, radiological and
101, 105, 133, 143–55, 159–61,
nuclear weapons, see CBRN
168, 173, 174, 179–81, 193, 215,
CIS, 174
223
civil liberties, 151, 166, 169, 172, 173,
see also CEPOL; Eurojust; Europol;
175, 177, 178, 234, 238
Frontex
Civil Liberties, Justice and Home
air security, 4, 78
Affairs Committee, see LIBE
Al Qaeda, 3, 4, 27, 71, 146, 231
civil protection, 185, 188
Amsterdam Treaty, 67, 103, 105, 158,
civil rights, 102, 105
165
Club of Berne, 76, 79
Area of Freedom, Security and Justice,
Common Foreign and Security Policy,
see AFSJ
see CFSP
asylum, 10, 110, 128, 134–6, 139, 164,
Common Security and Defence Policy,
166
see CSDP
Common European Asylum System,
consistency, 22, 23, 30–3
135
Container Security Initiative, see CSI
Australia, 190, 232, 239
coordination, 12, 28, 52, 53, 57, 65,
Austria, 78, 88, 99, 101, 155, 170, 193,
70, 72, 83, 113, 155, 161, 162,
232
168, 177, 193, 198, 235, 240
availability principle, 10, 78, 90, 92,
COSI, 161
143–84, 236
Council of Europe, 107, 194
Council Secretariat, 24, 32, 156, 160,
Balkans, 18 163, 170, 176, 197
Baltic Sea Task Force, 78 Counter-terrorism Coordinator, 1, 3,
Belgium, 75, 88, 92, 99, 101, 115, 155, 5, 73, 90, 144, 197
170, 193 Counter-terrorism Strategy, 1, 5, 86,
Benelux, 78 98, 169, 193, 220
bin Laden, Osama (1957–2011), 3 Counter-terrorist Group, see CTG
borders, 5, 9, 23, 40, 53, 54, 56, 78, 99, crisis management, 18, 28, 31, 102,
115, 128, 130, 134, 137, 143, 144, 160, 185, 188, 198, 200, 202
244
Index 245
CSDP, 9, 18, 19, 28–30, 33, 194, 198, 96–123, 135, 138, 159, 160, 161,
233, 237, 238, 240 163, 164, 167–8, 170, 176, 177,
CSI, 232 194, 197, 231, 232, 235
CTG, 76, 77, 79, 82, 158, 192 external dimension, 18, 40, 59, 101,
Cuba, 239 113, 117
customs, 90, 100, 102, 159, 163–5, 168 extradition, 55, 105, 231, 232
Customs Information System, see
CIS fingerprints, 78, 92, 99, 134–7, 166–72
Cyprus, 165 France, 1, 3, 75, 77, 78, 88, 92, 156,
Czech Republic, 78, 156 165, 170, 192, 193
Frontex, 18, 130, 161, 164, 180
data protection, 68, 74, 111, 130, 135,
136, 144, 145, 156, 158, 163, 166, Germany, 71, 77, 78, 82, 83, 88, 92,
173, 175, 179, 232, 234, 238 99, 156, 165, 170, 171, 192, 193,
Department of Homeland Security, see 221, 232
DHS Bundestag, 110, 113
DHS, 73, 148, 233 governance, 17, 79, 102, 109, 127,
DNA, 22, 78, 92, 99, 168, 170, 171, 153, 176, 179, 180, 187, 231
172 Greece, 172, 232
South Asia, 27, 137, 231 TFTP, 101, 102, 232, 233, 238, 239
South Korea, 239 trafficking, 27, 49, 51, 54, 70, 71, 100,
sovereignty, 25, 75, 105, 116, 230, 137, 188, 197, 237
236, 240 transparency, 65, 80, 97, 104, 116
Spain, 3, 75, 77, 78, 88, 99, 170, 232 trust, 9, 65, 75, 81, 91, 147, 151, 153,
Standing Committee on Internal 155, 160, 164, 168, 180, 191, 235
Security, see COSI
Stockholm Programme, 11, 87, 117, UK, 3, 77, 78, 88, 92, 109, 113, 114,
144, 156, 157, 166, 178, 180, 230, 155, 165, 172, 189, 190, 192, 193,
237 195, 197, 215–28
‘stove-piping’, 146, 147, 154, 155 United Kingdom, see UK
Sweden, 156, 168, 193 United Nations Office on Drugs and
Swedish Framework Decision, 11, 99, Crime, 44
164, 168, 170, 171, 175, 178
SWIFT, 102, 173, 232, 233, 238, 239 visa, 10, 76, 101, 128, 139, 164, 166,
Switzerland, 76, 92, 134, 158, 165, 192 168, 236
Visa Information System, 136–8
Tampere Programme, 158, 230, 231
technical assistance, 29, 30, 76 weapons of mass destruction, see
technology, 48, 151, 152, 154, 155, WMD
177, 179, 220 WMD, 19, 68, 146, 188, 200, 229
Terrorist Financing and Tracking
Programme, see TFTP Yemen, 4