Cordis Newsletter Socio-Economic Sciences and Humanities

CHALLENGE: The Changing Landscape of European Liberty and Security

4, 5 & 6 July 2007
IV CHALLENGE ANNUAL CONFERENCE:
Democratic Control and Judicial Accountability in an Area of Freedom, Security and Justice
Centre for European Policy Studies
Brussels, Belgium

A month after the June 2007 European Council reached consensus on the ‘Reform Treaty’ and only a few days after new threats to security were uncovered in the UK, CHALLENGE held its fourth annual conference in Brussels to present its mid-term report and debate what a new institutional framework might mean for justice and security for the EU, its citizens and those who have chosen Europe as their home.

CHALLENGE, «The Changing Landscape of European Liberty and Security», is an EU Integrated Project funded under the Sixth Framework Programme. It seeks to facilitate a more responsive and responsible assessment of the rules and practices of security and its implication for civil liberties, human rights and social cohesion in an enlarged Europe.

CHALLENGE’s three-day conference began with a keynote address by Baroness Sarah Ludford, MEP and Vice-Chairwoman of the European Parliament’s Human Rights Sub-Committee, who provided a perspective on the Area of Freedom, Security and Justice as seen from the European Parliament and commented on the timeliness of the conference.

The SSH Newsletter has invited Prof. Guild, Prof. Bigo and Mr Carrera to discuss, among other things, CHALLENGE, their mid-term findings and what the ERA Green Paper means for their areas of research and SSH in general.

Interview: Prof. Elspeth Guild (Radboud University of Nijmegen and Centre for European Policy Studies, CEPS), Prof. Didier Bigo (Sciences Po, FNSP) and Mr Sergio Carrera, Head of Section & Research Fellow, (CEPS);

1. This conference comes at a time when CHALLENGE is releasing its mid-term report, how has the focus of the project evolved since its inception?

After the European Council of 21/22 June 2007 agreed on a mandate for leading the EU out of its institutional deadlock, the CHALLENGE project held its Fourth Annual Conference addressing issues related to democratic control and judicial accountability in and Area of Freedom, Security and Justice. The event included presentations examining the way in which current institutional mechanisms, bodies and procedures applicable to security policy have an impact on the changing relationship between liberty and security and for civil liberties, human rights and social cohesion. The first day of the Conference was dedicated to the public presentation and discussion of the Mid-Term Report on the Results of the CHALLENGE project which, among other various themes, also addresses issues of European Governance and effects of current institutional mechanisms applicable to the internal and external dimensions of security

The Report may be retrievable from the CHALLENGE website

The CHALLENGE project generally responds to widespread concerns about the resort to specific illiberal practices by contemporary liberal regimes. These practices are linked with the identification of increasing insecurities at the global level, insecurities that are widely interpreted as obliging sterner policies from the authorities and new constraints on principles of liberty under law and presumptions about the innocence of individuals. Specifically, the project focuses on the tensions created by claims that ‘security is the first freedom’ and that a new ‘balance’ has to be established to manage the global scale of contemporary dangers. It assesses the justification of these policies on grounds of emergency, necessity and prevention in a transformed global environment, and the impact that they are having on civil liberties, human rights and social cohesion.

Are there areas of focus that have produced unexpected/ surprising results?

Among the most interesting interim results of the project is evidence that over the past six years there has been a consolidation of security measures which is characterised by claims of efficiency and speed used to defeat demands for democratic and judicial oversight. This is accompanied by a fragmentation of liberty where individual and collective freedoms are limited on time and space.

CHALLLENGE has addressed the way in which five years after 9/11 liberal polities have often resorted to many illiberal practices which have been legitimised by sweeping claims about global dangers. The tendency to focus on the conflict in Iraq obscures a broader pattern of surveillance in which illiberal practices are being justified by a complex field of routinised transactions among many transnationally organised agencies, institutions and interest groups, one that also thrives on weak claims to knowledge and apocalyptic visions of a dangerous future. Both the scale and the strategies through which new illiberal practices generated by emerging European and transnational actors are now justified threaten to take us well beyond established trade-offs between liberal aspirations and illiberal claims.

How do you view this conference/mid-term results in the context of the recently released ERA Green Paper?

The Green Paper identifies as a cross-cutting priority that beside scientific excellence European research should be rooted in European society and support knowledge advancement and dissemination and underpin policies in fields of major public concern. CHALLENGE research and activities are deeply rooted in issues intertwined with European societies by addressing the wider context of security as an issue of major public concern. Security certainly is, and CHALLENGE provides an assessment of the multifaceted implications of developing security policies on the individual (human rights, civil liberties and social cohesion), and the role that democratic control and judicial scrutiny have in the construction of an Area of Freedom, Security and Justice.

Further, the project is facilitating the enhancement of a new interdisciplinary network of scholars all across the European Union. CHALLENGE is allowing for the achievement of an adequate flow of competent researchers and a strong collaboration of excellent research institutes which are playing an influential role in the re-conceptualisation and analysis of many of the theoretical, political, sociological, legal and policy implications of new forms of violence and political identity.

2. What are some examples CHALLENGE has come across as evidence of the changing liberty and security landscape? What are the principle factors contributing to this change, and how can CHALLENGE specifically and SSH generally contribute to our understanding this change?

CHALLENGE is providing evidence in order to gain a global understanding of the changing landscape of liberty and security by looking at issues such as the radicalisation of violence, critical infrastructure and threat assessment, as well as the development of technologies of surveillance, the production of laws on counter-terrorism, the development of forms of intelligence-led surveillance and specific logics of control of the freedom to move, and the transformation of the criminal justice system. It is analysing the nature, practices and implications of these subjects by putting them in relation to their impact on liberty and the rights and freedoms of citizens and foreigners. In this regard, the project has assessed the effects of suspicion and exception in the changing relationship between liberty and security in the following thematic streams:

New frontiers and the shifts in governance with respect to the competence over external borders control in the light of the protection of internal and external security.

The impact of enlargement processes on issues of external and internal security through an assessment of experiences by some of the 2004 Member States in the processes of Europeanization, as well as of the strategies and policies being practiced when comparing the Eastern with the Southern European Borders;

Immigrants and Islam: An analysis of the fear of the enemy within and «the Exceptionalism» and of laws, policies, social practices and political/media discourse on «immigration», «integration», «asylum» and «Islam and Muslims».

The institutional, constitutional and normative patterns of «European Governance», and their implications and tensions in the fields of internal and external security.

The interdisciplinary nature, the increasing cross-fertilization between its different elements as well as the achievement of integrated outputs is having as a result academically rigorous tools to inform policy.

In her opening speech of the recent conference, Baroness Ludford MEP discussed how CCTV, etc. lead to the swift apprehension of those suspected to be behind the recent attacks in the UK, thereby cooling the argument that increased surveillance contributes to increased security. Could you comment on that point?

There is an important transformation taking place in the nature and position of security policies centred on the tracking of the citizen and her/ his freedom to move through databases and biometrics identifiers within a transnational space. The impact of the new modern logic of ‘systems of information’ and the use of new technologies, which intend to trace human activity in the social, economic and political dimensions, in freedom, data protection and privacy is of utmost importance in order to acquire a global understating of the new forms of how the EU is embracing the citizen and its innovative ways of governance. The ethical implications of these new forms of governance is also crucial. The legality, consistency and proportionality of these on the status of ‘citizen in the European Union’ is one of the most important topics to be addressed for acquiring a global understanding of democratic governance and policy processes in Europe.

The ‘democratic deficit’ is a well-worn term when characterising the EU in general. This conference specifically addresses this notion in terms of the AFSJ. What are some concrete steps the EU/MS/individuals can take to reduce the deficit? What role do social sciences have in achieving this goal in general, and CHALLENGE specifically?

There is a need to remove the democratic and judicial deficits of the current legal framework which apply to the building of a common Area of Freedom, Security and Justice. The limited role of national and the European Parliament in EU police and judicial cooperation matters, as well as shortcomings with regard to the European Commission and the European Court of Justice is particularly addressed in the mandate for the Reform Treaty. One of the areas where the CHALLENGE partners have carried out substantial research is in the demand for a voice in pluralist democracies and how these demands translate to the EU context.

The CHALLENGE project seeks to provide a wider public with the possibility of joining the debate at this crucial moment on the EU’s future Justice and Home Affairs policies.

3. The tone of the conference, starting with Baroness Ludford, was one of scepticism as to whether the reform treaty would offer an improvement over the current situation in terms of AFJS. In your opinion, what are the principle institutional hurdles still to be overcome to achieve increased democratic control in AFJS?

At present the role of the European Parliament and of national parliaments in the decision-making processes applicable to an Area of Freedom, Security and Justice are clearly insufficient in order to ensure the development of policies which are sustained by proper democratic control and scrutiny. Many EU leaders are clearly uneasy that, should their people be asked to approve in a referendum whether even the mandate for the Reform Treaty is satisfactory, a positive answer is not assured. This fact indicates how much more work needs to be done not just to convince the people of Europe that the Treaty is in their interest, but to ensure that democratic and judicial control of the EU’s development is robust and will satisfy the demands of the people. One of the objectives of CHALLENGE is to examine and make policy recommendations relevant both to the national and the EU policy makers on how to achieve these objectives of democratic legitimacy and judicial control in the AFSJ.

With the Reform Treaty the current institutional fragmentation will be over, along with a large number of its negative externalities. The abolition of the Pillar structure characterising an AFSJ will lead to increasing legal certainty, a set of uniform legal acts, stronger involvement of the European Parliament in the decision-making process, as well as the widening of the ECJ’s jurisdiction to review and interpret these policies. This will facilitate the development of more comprehensive, legitimate, efficient, transparent and democratic responses to the dilemmas posed by the Europeanization processes and the creation of a common AFSJ. However careful attention will need to be paid to differentiation and exceptions to the key institutional innovations highlighted not to become the rule.

4. Your mid-term report refers to the interdisciplinary approach to research as being particularly valuable. Can you elaborate on this point, as well as the importance/necessity of ERA for interdisciplinary and trans-national research in SSH? Could you touch on CHALLENGE’s experience in terms of transnational cooperation and concerning outreach of research to policy, civil society, etc?

An interdisciplinary approach is of utmost importance for a critical assessment of the discourses on security and the implications on liberty. The project is showing an academically rigorous and interdisciplinary assessment, drawing from various disciplines of the social sciences and humanities such as international relations/philosophy, sociology and law, around the following issues. The synthesis process carried out in the elaboration of the Mid-Term Report has also revealed the integrated nature as one of the core factors characterising the CHALLENGE project. The elaboration of the Mid-Term report counted with the direct contribution from the various interdisciplinary perspectives of the different teams. Further, during the third year there have been various examples of crossworkpackage collaboration and cooperation both in terms of research and in the organisation of events. In fact, the project has shown both how partners engaged primarily in empirical research have been inspired and guided by those developing more theoretical assessments of the issues at stake and how more theoretical work has been reshaped by the enormous complexities revealed by empirical analysis. These processes of mutual exchange, collaboration and understanding have been a crucial feature of the integrative character of the project.

The training dimension currently constitutes one of the more important features of the project. The CHALLENGE training school has brought together a large number of young researchers and scholars to deepen and widen their knowledge in subjects dealing with security. Three editions have been already organized by the Justice and Home Affairs Section at CEPS. The training school constitutes a unique venue for researchers to interact and confront their positioning along with CHALLENGE partners, as well as other experts and academics, key stakeholders and policy makers.

5. In the debate surrounding ERA, the idea of the ‘fifth freedom’ for research is often brought up. How does this idea fit into the concept of freedom and security? How can research, especially SSH, enhance freedom more generally? How can such research help in identifying and assessing the impacts of rapidly developing technologies in the field of detection, monitoring, surveillance?

The fifth freedom relates to realising a single labour market for researchers and ensuring mobility of researchers and academia, and develop an European framework which improves the recruitment, working and geographical and intersectoral mobility conditions for researchers.

Freedom to move and portability of rights such as social security, equality, recognition of qualifications, etc. are key to assuring effective and policyrelevant research. As we have seen in CHALLENGE, constructing valuable and policy specific recommendations which retain their validity whether viewed from the local, national, or EU arena depends on the exercise of this «fifth freedom». Researchers from across the EU must be able to work together without compromising their career prospects in order to enrich European policy debate at all functions. All too often, lack of mobility among researchers is the result of national qualification rules which have the effect of excluding researchers from other Member States through concours structures which privilege national candidates or block promotions prospects through procedures which benefit national and local candidates. The result is that research which is relevant to the whole EU, rather than only one Member State, is often neutral or counterproductive for researchers’ career development. The development of the fifth freedom is critical to ensuring that the EU’s researchers engage with the EU and in doing so advance their careers.

Source : CORDIS NEWSLETTER SOCIO-ECONOMIC SCIENCES AND HUMANITIES, Issue 9, Third Quarter 2007, pp. 4-7.

See also : Conference Proceedings: Democratic Control and Judicial Accountability in Area of Freedom, Security and Justice

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