Changes in the Security concept and the JHA agenda

STATE OF THE ART - WP5

CHALLENGE

CENTRE FOR EUROPEAN POLICY STUDIES, BRUSSELS

IN COLLABORATION WITH

IUEE, UNIVERSITE AUTONOMA DE BARCELONA

CHANGES IN CONCEPTS OF SECURITY

AND THE JHA AGENDA

Concepts of security are based on fear of actual and potential attacks on public authorities, persons and property. The differences arise over what constitutes an attack and the direction from which potential dangers come. Two general changes in conceptions of security are evident over the past decade and a half. First, as the threat of conventional military attack on Western Europe has declined with the collapse of the Soviet Union, there has been a blurring of the distinction between internal and external security. This constitutes a radical change because, since the 17th century, the two were regarded as conceptually distinct - the external threat was that of invasion by a hostile power whilst the internal threat was subversion and threats to public order. The ever-increasing internationalisation of economic and social processes has blurred the traditional distinction between internal and external security worldwide. Nevertheless, the linkage between internal and external security fields lies at the core of the redefinition of the West European security. Criminal threats, including terrorism, are seen as security threats, which have both internal and external dimensions and need to be treated together. The European Heads of State and Government recognised this explicitly in the Tampere Presidency Conclusions.

Before the evaluation of recent developments and setting out of proposals in Justice and Home Affairs, two background matters should be considered. The first is the re-conceptualisation of security in recent years; the collapse of Soviet communism, increasing global integration and the events of September 11th have each produced radical changes in attitudes. These changing ideas about security have had, and continue to have, a powerful influence over the Justice and Home Affairs agenda. The first moves towards JHA cooperation - the Trevi group, ministerial meetings, Schengen and Chancellor Kohl’s call for a European FBI - were all motivated by internal security concerns. Secondly, the late 1990s saw a re-balancing in the Treaty of Amsterdam and the Tampere Presidency Conclusions with a new emphasis on freedom and justice, in order to legitimise the growing influence of the EU in this field. However, security concerns and crime fighting remain the determining factors driving policy. But the setting of the JHA agenda is not a straightforward reflection of ideas about security - it is a much more complex matter - and therefore the two should be considered separately.

I

In the late 1980s, particularly in the light of the development of Europol, law enforcement agencies and political thinkers developed a concept of securitythat links together broad categories of activities: terrorism, drug trafficking, organised crime, transborder crime, illegal immigration, asylum seekers, and minority ethnic groups. This conception represents a variety of very different problems as elements of one general security threat. In addition, since the end of the cold war, there has been a blurring of the distinction between internal and external security, as the threat of a conventional military attack on Western Europe has declined.

This idea has been sharply criticised, by those such as Didier Bigo, (who has labelled this concept a security continuum,) [1] for linking very different activities, profiling of groups and criminalising illegal immigrants. It is also objectionable on grounds that it categorises difficult problems as security threats too quickly and too emphatically. A crucial element in the merging of internal and external security has been the re-classification of undocumented immigrants and asylum seekers as problems of security. As some analysts [2] assess, the wideners of security have been criticized for being unable to specify a clear criterion to prevent everything becoming defined as security.

But the linkage between security fields lies at the core of the redefinition of the West European security following the collapse of the Soviet Union. Integration of the tasks and functions of police services, immigration services, customs and intelligence services, is sustained by the gradual re-shaping of the security continuum under the pressure of events, such as, most dramatically, the terrorist attacks of September 2001 and March 2004.

Threat analysis has led to growing importance being attributed to the collection of strategic intelligence, the increased role of certain national police agencies, the entry of intelligence services into domains previously regarded as the preserve of the ‘police’, and problems of definition of roles and coordination of police agencies. However, it also provides the opportunity of an enhanced role for Europol in both strategic intelligence-gathering and the coordination of investigations of transborder criminal activities. But certain questions are likely to be raised in an acute and urgent form on the problem of the relatively slow progress of EU judicial cooperation and integration, the protection of individual rights, the Treaty basis of JHA cooperation, the legitimacy of rapid development of EU responsibilities in this field, to mention only the most obvious ones.

II

‘Security’, like ‘freedom’ or ‘equality’, [3] may be described as an essentially contested concept’. [4] The various meanings attributed to it are not merely the consequence of different political commitments and beliefs of individuals along a Right/Left spectrum. Notions of security are influenced by broader cultural factors, as well as by the socio-economic and professional environments. We are therefore dealing with a very complex pattern of beliefs and perceptions, which cannot be fully explored in this paper.

Concepts of security have, however, one principle thing in common - they are based on fear of actual and potential attacks on public authorities, persons and property. In Europe, until recently, these threats were conceived as coming from two distinct sources. According to Machiavelli’s 16th century vision, internal and external threats to the power of ‘the Prince’ were clearly distinct. Internally, the ruler feared conspiracy. Externally, he dreaded aggression by foreign powers. The Florentine also acknowledged interdependencies between these two fundamental categories of political risks: in practice, external peace would foster internal stability and vice versa. But policy-making in the two fields was based on different sets of tools and responded to different ‘logic’s’. [5]

In the following centuries, in Western Europe, the autonomy of internal and external security policies was strengthened by the development of the Nation State and the increasing specialisation of administrative bodies and public security agencies (national police, on the one side, national armies, on the other). [6] Recent trends towards the ever-increasing internationalisation of economic and social processes have blurred the traditional distinction between internal and external security (and the relative policy-fields) worldwide. [7] In Western Europe, however, and especially in the last twenty years, the conceptual convergence of the two faces of security has perhaps been more evident than elsewhere (a theme developed below). Also, the kinds of actions considered to threaten security have been widened considerably with technological and social changes. Threats to the environment and threats to the social balance within societies are now often considered as threats to security. In the case of diplomacy and defence, this approach to security is not new. In fact it dates back to the beginning of the Helsinki process in 1973: the comprehensive view of security taken by the CSCE is reflected in the three baskets of the Helsinki Final Act. The CSCE work entailed the emergence of new concepts of security, such as global or comprehensive that thanks to the CSCE pan European membership, were incorporated into other European frameworks. Regarding the EU, these new concepts were timidly embodied for the first time in the Single European Act [8].

However, two events can be considered the main propellers of the reconceptualization of security in the field of foreign and defence policy. First, the disappearance of the external common threat with the end of Cold War called for a new institutional reconfiguration of the so-called «security triangle» [9]: NATO, WEU and EU. Because of its very nature, that of a defence organization, NATO could only provide the politico-military part of the answer to the new European security environment: collective defence, peace support operations and politico-military dialogue and partnership. The Common Concept of the WEU (1995) was the first attempt to draft a distinctive European security strategy in order to deal with the new security threats. Second, the reappearance of war in Europe, in the Balkans, made clear the necessity of devising a new way to deal with the threats in Europe beyond the security umbrella of the United States. The growing number of intra-state conflicts and the ‘new’ security agenda were associated with social destabilization and the ensuing challenges to established identities of individuals and societies (‘societal security’), economic inequalities, environmental competition, etc. could not be prevented by traditional CBSM (Confidence and Security Building Measures).

This very obvious starting point is a necessary preface to the framing of a central hypothesis: different policy approaches have different security ‘cultures’ and tend to follow (sometimes consciously, sometimes unconsciously) different security models and security logics.

At the macro-level of European security policy-making, a distinction may be made between the culture of ‘internal security’ (police, in a broad sense) and of ‘external security’ (involving diplomacy and military expertise). Since the Copenhagen European Council of June 1993 the dominant European approach to external security has explicitly been an inclusive one. A security culture based on integration as a method for ‘structural’ conflict management and prevention is clearly present within the European Union. The underlying ‘logic’ of this culture was that conflict management should be based on bringing the relevant parties into a comprehensive system of cooperative relations. This logic of integration is especially relevant from an ad extram perspective. Prevention and conflict management by bringing the relevant parties into a comprehensive system of cooperative relations (with the European Union as such) is the underlying logic of first, Europe’s enlargement and second, the Neighbourhood Policy. The well-known sound-bite of the former President of the European Commission Romano Prodi that of «the ring of friends» summarizes this new approach in the field of security. But the main example of this underlying logic is the European Union as such, since it can be undoubtedly considered as a «security community» in Deutch’s terms, that is, a community of States where the possibility of war has disappeared. In other words, the European Union from its very beginning has chosen the «route to peace via integration.» [10]

III

By contrast, from the mid-1980s, in conjunction with the two connected processes of Europeanisation and externalisation of internal security, an exclusive and defensive approach (i.e. removal and/or containment of the perceived threats) to European internal security became predominant.

In addition, Western Europe experienced in the last decade and a half a major transformation in the notion and perception of security as a political value and policy goal. With the progress in European integration and the gradual waning of the external threat represented by the Communist bloc, two parallel processes of ‘Europeanisation’ and ‘externalisation’ of what were traditionally labelled as ‘internal security’ issues were, at least in part, considered as coming from the outside. [11]

Europeanisation. During the 1980s, the Schengen agreement (signed in 1985 and followed in 1990 by the implementation Convention) and the Single European Act (1986) accelerated the transformation of the European Community into a unified space, where freedom of circulation is the rule and restrictions to it, the exception.

This unification of the European space was represented in the dominant political discourse as a major achievement, which had nevertheless some negative implications. Lifting controls and restrictions to intra-European circulation of capitals, goods and persons would create, it was said, new opportunities for criminal and other forms of illegal activities. Internal security risks, which until now had been apprehended and tackled at the national level, within the reassuring enceinte of State borders, now needed to be redefined and countered at the European level. Internal security was now defined as legitimate field for European co-optation.

Other factors of Europeanisation in the security realm can be found in the external dimension of the EU. In this sense, the practices of cooperation lead to a process of institutionalization, which necessarily involves the emergence of a «we-feeling» among the members of the community [12]. In the case of security from an external approach, the cooperation of French and British armies in the Balkans led to the development of the defence dimension of the Union. This development was established in a new institutional scheme, that could lead to a form of European governance in this hard «sovereignty realm». However, it is obvious that the creation of the defense policy is a delicate «balance» among different national security cultures (Nordic countries, German, etc.).

Externalisation. Through a series of distinct but connected processes, all the main traditional ‘internal threats were re-conceptualised, and the external (extra-European) origin or dimension of each of them was emphasised, both in qualitative and in quantitative terms. Within law enforcement agencies, and frequently in political discourse, the idea of a security continuum was advanced making connections between broad categories of activities: terrorism, drug trafficking, organised crime, trans-frontier crime, illegal immigration, asylum seekers, and some minority ethnic groups.

The main aspects of that process of externalisation of internal security can be summarised as follows:

Despite the persistence of acts of political violence, commonly called terrorism, in several European countries, the non-European, transnational components of terrorism gained greater relevance in public opinion and political discourse.

International migration, within which the irregular/undocumented/illegal component has become progressively more important, started to be perceived and treated as a security threat with non-European sources. [13]

Globalisation and the collapse of law enforcement systems in the former Communist countries boosted the internationalisation of criminal organisations engaged in drug trafficking, money laundering, people smuggling, car theft and other traffics. However, the relative importance of the transnational component in organised crime (and of the ‘imported’ component in ‘petty’ crime) has probably been overestimated and overemphasised.

The Europeanisation and the externalisation of internal security have had a major impact on structures, methods and contents of the policy-making process in the field of justice and home affairs. Europeanisation of the (perceived) threats has been the central incentive (and crucial legitimising argument) to reinforce and institutionalise the already existing European cooperation in that field. This was done in several stages and at different levels: first in the Schengen framework, then under the third pillar of the EU, finally in the inter-pillar context of the ‘area of freedom, security and justice’ outlined in Amsterdam.

The externalisation of internal security issues created an incentive for national law enforcement agencies, whose activities had been exclusively concentrated within national borders, to devote an increasing share of their institutional and operational efforts to the international arena. This was embodied in partly overlapping intergovernmental cooperative frameworks (Trevi; Schengen; Maastricht’s third pillar), which produced a peculiar, homogeneous and (in spite of its institutional clumsiness) cohesive ‘internal security regime’. [14] The basic features of such security regime were the following:

lifting of systematic police controls on movements of people and goods at internal borders;

strengthening of international police cooperation, particularly in (internal) cross-border regions (regulation of cross-border pursuit, joint police stations, joint patrolling in cross-border areas, etc.);

pooling of police data and information among national law enforcement bodies (Schengen Information System - SIS; Customs Information System - CIS; Europol’s ‘computerised system of collected information’);

harmonisation and reinforcement of external border controls, conceived as a ‘system of concentric security lines’. [15]

The external projection of internal security agencies has caused some problems. It generated an increasing overlapping of, and occasionally open competition between, the policy communities and public agencies traditionally invested with the task of ensuring external security. [16]

In a national context, such potential for overlapping, competition and/or conflict had been apparent for some years. At the European level, although the ‘internal security’ pillar was officially created almost a decade ago, it was triggered by major developments that affected both ‘second pillar’ and ‘third pillar’ policy-makers. Despite the fact that ‘the idea of a link between internal and external security is a logical consequence of the process of European integration’ [17], only very recently did the European Heads of State and Government recognise explicitly - in the Tampere Presidency Conclusions - that internal and external security policies require coordination:

The European Council underlines that all competences and instruments at the disposal of the Union, and in particular, in external relations must be used in an integrated and consistent way to build the area of freedom, security and justice. Justice and Home Affairs concerns must be integrated in the definition and implementation of other Union policies and activities. [18]

But, as this assertion suggests, internal-external security policy coordination is a complex matter and needs to operate in two directions. First, external security policy tools should be compatible or, better, create synergies with internal security policy objectives. Second, internal security policies should contribute to the general political objectives of the Union’s external policy. This is exemplified in the official statement: ‘JHA is essential given the worldwide challenges facing the Union, such as restoring the rule of law, controlling migratory movements and combating organised crime. Above and beyond the strategic importance of a particular country, a global approach is required’. [19] From the perspective of the foreign and security policy, this idea of global approach is perfectly embodied in the European Neighbourhood Policy of the European Union [20]. The link between external and internal security is the basis for the European approach towards its periphery, since this policy is aimed to project stability in the periphery in order to increase the security of the member states. To achieve this objective, the Neighbourhood Policy has adopted a holistic approach and it has progressively combined traditional foreign policy instruments with the incorporation the JHA dimension in the relations with the neighbors. Similarly and also in the field of CFSP, the Programme for the Prevention of Violent Conflicts calls for an integrated policy that surpasses the borders between the pillars of the Union. The EU thus favours a broad and integrated approach that addresses all dimensions of security: political, socio-economic, demographic, cultural, ecological, etc. as well as military.

In brief, three recent changes are modifying the landscape of EU internal security, and Justice and Home Affairs more generally.

First, with the Treaty of Amsterdam coming into force, the European internal security regime entered a dynamic phase of transformation, marked primarily by the stronger role of EU institutions (incorporation of the Schengen acquis in the EU; ‘communitarisation’ of immigration and asylum policies) and by a stronger political impulse to the development of the judiciary dimension of European cooperation in the field of law enforcement (European Judicial Network; Eurojust). The 1999 Tampere Presidency Conclusions set out the agenda for change over the coming years with a mechanism (the ‘scoreboard’) for ensuring that the timetable was adhered to. Also, the Tampere conclusions formally recognized the importance of the external dimension as a component for developing the European Union into an area of freedom, security and justice. This includes cooperating with partner countries and international organisations to construct an area of peace, stability and prosperity encompassing the neighbours of an enlarged European Union. At the Santa María da Feira European Council in June 2000, the EU leaders agreed on a series of priorities for the external dimension of justice and home affairs [21]. The progressive overlapping of the external and internal dimension of European security has been a conceptual development accompanied by a process of institutionalization by cooperation [22]. Also, as some analysts assess, there has been a process of learning between these two dimensions of high intergovernmental profile, to the extent that we can state that the model of European Political Cooperation had been extended to JHA, a similarly sensitive area in terms of sovereignty [23]. Indeed, the sense of urgency after the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001 and March 11, 2004 in Madrid led to a faster development of this dimension in a communitarian way which comes in the form of more policy cooperation and information exchanges.

Second, new institutional (the Commission and the European Parliament) and professional actors (prosecutors, judges, senior police officers) have been brought closer to the centre of the JHA’s political arena. Such increased pluralism could foster a significant evolution away from the exclusive and defensive approach to European internal security issues. However, over the past decade these two security ‘logics’ - the political-diplomatic one, fundamentally inclusive, and the law enforcement one, more focused on exclusion - diverged or even collided on different issues and on strategic choices. [24]

Third, the emergence of the EU as an area of freedom of circulation has fostered a common perception of internal security priorities and the intensification of technical and political cooperation in this area. More than elsewhere, the ‘external’ (extra-EU) dimension of ‘internal security threats’ has been increasingly emphasised. [25] This has resulted in a strong incentive towards better coordination between the internal and external security policy fields, typified by Mr. Javier Solana’s role in promoting the use of civil police in peacekeeping operations and in promoting judicial and police cooperation between the EU and neighbouring states (such as the JHA Action Plan for the Ukraine). Within the EU member states, police and judicial authorities are increasingly seeking international partnerships and extending their liaison activities with foreign jurisdictions; the military, on their side, seek a role in assisting with public order problems and in anti-terrorist activities.

However, in the defence field, the development of a security culture is hard to assess. The security ‘hard’ side remains intergovernmental and it is heavily dependent on the Atlantic framework. But there are huge promising areas for EU activity, as conflict prevention, which fits (...) comfortably with its civilian power image and capabilities» [26]. In any case, the European Security Strategyis a good starting point of a political will and a work draft in order to develop this security culture. As someone has assessed, the ESS clearly builds on the ‘European way’ in international relations [27].

IV

This workpackge will be a cross-cutting workpackage; it will use the theoretical framework developed in Workpackges 1, 2 and 3 to develop its evaluation on the changing dynamic of security to therefore make policy analysis and recommendations.

We shall examine:

What are the perceived threats to security? This will done through interviews with officials, NGOs and academics working both at national, European and international levels in EU 25 and neighbouring states and consultation of the main international newspapers and secondary source literature.

How did the events since 11th September affect concepts of security and particularly the relationship between internal security, external security and foreign policy in the EU 25, the near abroad and at transatlantic level? This will build upon the work done by other workpackges on conceptualisation of security, its sociological implications and polity and legal dimensions to draw out an analysis of policy.

How were migration, asylum, and border control policies affected and/or possibly transformed as a result of the changing dynamic of security in the EU 25 and neighbouring states?

What forms of democratic controls and accountability benchmarks (these will be drawn out from the results of WP6) can be identified in a selection of countries from the EU 25 and neighbouring states and how can these be developed further to make the policy process and implementation more transparent, to prevent a predominance of the security rationale (strengthening controls on persons and their activities, improved surveillance, intrusive investigatory procedures) over freedom (civil liberties, rights for non-EU nationals, treatment of immigration and asylum cases, freedom of speech).

To what extent has Europeanisation of perceived threats been a central incentive and legitimizing argument to reinforce and institutionalise the already existing European cooperation in the field of security and law enforcement cooperation. To assess this we shall study the several stages of relevant policy development at different levels: first in the Schengen framework, then under the third pillar of the EU, finally in the inter-pillar context of the ‘area of freedom, security and justice’ outlined in Amsterdam.

To what extent the externalisation of internal security issues created an incentive for national law enforcement agencies (in EU 25, neighbouring states and at the transatlantic level) whose activities had been exclusively concentrated within national borders, to devote an increasing share of their institutional and operational efforts to the international arena.

PRIMARY SOURCES OF REFERENCE:

Schengen Acquis, OJEC, L 329, 22 September 2000.

Schengen Working Group I, (Police and Security) to the Central Group, on 24 November 1998, [SCH/I (98) 86, 2nd rev.].

Council of the European Union, European Union priorities and policy objectives for external relations in the field of justice and home affairs, doc. 7653/00 JAI 35, Brussels, 6 June 2000, p. 6.

Council document SN 3926/6/01 REV 6.

Commission Communication, Towards integrated management of the external borders of the member states of the European Union, COM(2002) 233 final, Brussels, 7.5.2002.

Commission Communication on a Wider Europe - Neighbourhood: A New Framework for Relations with our Eastern and Southern Neighbours, Brussels, 11.3.2003, COM(2003) 104 final.

Commission Communication, European Neighbourhood Policy, Strategy Paper, COM(2004) 373 final, Brussels, 12.5.2004.

The European Security Strategy, «A Secure Europe in a Better World», Brussels, 12 December 2003.

Council Decision of 22 December 2000 establishing a European Police College (CEPOL), Official Journal L 336, 30.12.2000.

Commission Communication on Conflict Prevention, Brussels, COM (2001) 211 final

SECONDARY SOURCES OF REFERENCE:

A. Ceyhan, Migrants as a Threat: a Comparative Analysis of Securitarian Discourse: France and the United States, in V. Gray (ed.), A European Dilemma. Immigration, Citizenship and Identity in Western Europe, Bergham Books, Oxford, 1999.

B. Buzan, Peoples, States and Fear. An Agenda for International Security Studies in the Post-Cold War Era, Lynne Rienner, Boulder, CO, 1991, 2nd ed., p. 7.

D. Bigo, ‘The European internal security field stakes an rivalries in a newly developing area of police intervention’, in Malcolm Anderson and Monica den Boer (eds), Policing Across National Boundaries, London: Pinter, 1994, p. 164.

D. Bigo, Polices en réseaux: l’expérience européenne, Presses de Sciences Po, Paris, 1996; M.

E. Barbé, La seguridad en la Nueva Europa,Madrid: Libros de la Catarata, 1995

E. Barbé. & E. Johansson (eds), Beyond Enlargement: The new members and new frontiers of the enlarged European Union, Bellaterra: Institut Universitari d’Estudis Europeus, 2003. Available at: www.uab.es/iuee

S. Biscop, «The European Security Strategy implementing a distinctive approach to security», Sécurité & Stratégie, n. 82, March 2004

F. Ferrucio, ‘Reconciling the Prince’s two ‘Arms’. Internal-External Security Policy Coordination in the EU, ‘Occasional Papersno. 30, Institute for Security Studies, Western European Union (ISS/WEU) Paris Sept. 2001.

F. Reinares, «European Democracies against Terrorism: Governmetal Policies and Intergovernmental Cooperation», The Oñati International Institute for the Sociology of Law, 2000.

H. Wallace & W. Wallace, Policy-making in the European Union, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000, p. 466

I.Loader, «Policing, Securitization and Democratization in Europe,» Criminal Justice (special issue on «How Does Crime Policy Travel?») 2/2, 2002, 125-153.

K.Smith, European Union Foreign Policy in a Changing World, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003, p. 47

M. Smith, Europe’s Foreign and Security Policy. The institutionalisation of cooperation, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004

M. Anderson, Frontiers: Territory and State Formation in the Modern World (Cambridge: Polity, 1996).

M. Anderson, Policing the World: Interpol and the Politics of International Police Cooperation, Clarendon Press: Oxford 1989 140.

M. Foucault, «Society Must be Defended», Lectures at the Collége de France, 1975-1976, Picador, 2003.

N. Soguk, States and Strangers: Refugees and Displacements of Statecraft (University of Minnesota Press, 1999).

O. Weaver, B. Buzan, M. Keistrup, P. Lemaitre, Identity, Migration and the New Security Agenda in Europe, Pinter, London, 1993;

O. Waever, «European security identities», Journal of Common Market Studies, vol. 34, n. 1, 1996, p.13

P. Andreas & R. Price, ‘From War Fighting to Crime Fighting: Transforming the American National Security State.’ International Studies Review, 2001, 11, pp. 31-52.

S. Smith, ‘The Increasing Insecurity of Security Studies: Conceptualizing Security in the Last Twenty Years’, in S. Croft and T. Terriff (eds), ‘Critical Reflections on Security and Change’ special issue of Contemporary Security Policy, Vol. 20, No 3, December 1999, p. 72 ff.

LITERATURE REVIEW OF KEY TEXTS WHICH WILL INFORM US THROUGHOUT OUR WORK IN WP 5

Anderson Malcolm & Joanna Apap, Police and Justice Co-operation and the New European Borders, Kluwer Law International, European Monographs, 2002.

Enlargement requires the Union to engage itself much more deeply in policy areas related to internal and external security which have only recently been added to its competences. Responses to these challenges involve not only legal and institutional innovation, but also the need to build trust within the Union and between it and its neighbours.

The book analyses the very important issue of the evolving definition of security. Since the 11th September, it has become more evident that a rethinking is required with the delimitation of the two dimensions of security in Europe; internal and external which is integral to the debate on the new EU external borders and co-operation in the field of justice and home affairs. This book also discusses how to establish trust when dealing with the implementation of police and judicial co-operation, the fight against terrorism, organized crime and human trafficking, and how to ensure full implementation of JHA in candidate countries. This book brings together contributions by a distinguished list of political actors, policy makers, advisers, experts and researchers from all parts of Europe and makes a very timely contribution to the debate on the future of Europe and the pending closure of the enlargement negotiations.

Bigo, Didier. "The European internal security field: stakes and rivalries in a newly developing area of police intervention" in Policing across national boundaries. Ed. by Malcolm Anderson and Monica den Boer. London; New York: Pinter Publishers, 1994.

Ten papers from a European workshop in Limerick, Ireland, Easter 1992, discuss both theoretical and practical challenges to cooperation between police forces in the new integrated Europe. Among the issues addressed are the exchange of intelligence, anti-fraud cooperation, refugees and the external border, data protection, and civil liberties.

Bretherton, C. & Vogler, J. (1999),The European Union as a Global Actor, London: Routledge

A key book to better understand the external dimension of the Common Foreign and Security Policy from a constructivist approach. Bretherton & Vogler begin their analysis of the European Union’s participation in world affairs by defining the concept of actorness. In order to explain this innovative concept, they state five basic requirements: shared commitment to a set of overarching values and principles; the ability to identify policy priorities and to formulate coherent policies; the ability effectively to negotiate with other actors in the international system, the availability and capacity to utilize policy instruments; and finally, domestic legitimation of decision processes relating to external policy. Bretherton & Vogler assert that the Union fulfills these basic requirements. Also, they place great importance on if the rest of the actors of the international system consider the Union as a global actor, since identity and actorness depend on others’ views and how other actors interact with the new one.

The method of analysis of this constructivist approach considers the European Union as a sui generisentity (multi-perspectival polity) and its performance on world affairs. This feature is the result of its mixed nature: as an agent (the entrepreneurs politiques of the Member States) and as a product of the international structure. This «unique» nature does not imply a lack of effective capacity of the external performance of the Union, as Bretherton & Vogler show in their analysis of six policy areas where the EU has an important role: international economy and trade, environment, development cooperation, neighbourhood policy, Common Foreign and Security Policy and defense policy.

Foucault Michel, «Society Must Be Defended», Lectures at the Collège de France 1975-1976, Picador, 1997.

Foucault traces the genealogy of the problem of war in society form the seventeenth century to the present. Inverting Clausewitz’s famous formulation «War is politics by other means», Foucault explores the notion that «politics is war by other means» in its relation to race, class struggle, and, of course, power. Providing us with a new model of political rationality, he overturns many of our long-held ideas of sovereignty, the law, and even truth itself. The full significance of the dictum «Society must be defended» becomes clear when Foucault’s examination culminates in an extraordinary discussion of modern forms of racism.

Franklin Jane (ed.), «The Politics of Risk Society», 1998, Polity Press.

This volume looks at risk in contemporary society, and illustrates how it is becoming a dynamic force for change in our individual and political lives. The way we interpret risk, negotiate risk, and live with the unforeseen consequences of modernity will structure our culture, society and politics for the coming decades.

The concept of risk society opens up individual and political opportunities. It presents an understanding of the internal and external dynamics of social change, which generate a realistic, yet hopeful politics. Ulrich Beck and Anthony Giddens develop the parameters of this theory. To understand risk society, they argue, we have to begin to think in a new way about the world we live in, to find a new language to describe what is happening to us. We have all become acutely aware of how it feels to live in risk society. And this feeling generated adds to our sense of insecurity, which embodies for Beck and Giddens the process of transition from one form of society to another: from the first phase to the second phase of modernity. The first phase is characterized by industrialization and the drive to conquer the natural world, the belief in progress and the disenchantment with religion. Risk society marks the end of the first phase.

Modernity is now freeing itself from the contours of classical industrial society and emerging in a new form. The second phase of modernity is taking shape, but we cannot understand or describe it with our existing vocabulary.

How we deal with this becomes a political problem with at least two solutions. If we see it as the consequence of a breakdown of traditional order, we may seek to preserve and strengthen those institutions and relationships that once worked, in the interests of social cohesion, to provide a secure backdrop to social, economic and political life. This politics appears to be a resistance to change. It offers a way of imagining a secure society. But this security is based on how people should live and on the obligations they should feel towards each other. It endeavours to build the ideas of trust and responsibility into institutions that are themselves rapidly changing and are incapable of responding as we imagine they used to.

In contrast the politics of risk society takes the reality of everyday life as its starting point, recognizing that we need a new language to describe what is happening to us-the possibility of living creatively with risk and uncertainty. It offers an alternative strategy to the politics of nostalgic community.

Ulrich Beck and Anthony Giddens map the contours of this new society and the other contributors to this volume offer insights into the risks and possibilities that emerge when we step outside traditional approaches to uncertainty and begin to see things in a different way.

Adam Raphael’s chapter on Lloyd’s and the limits of insurance reveals what can happen to institutions when they struggle to stand still while the world around them is changing. He charts the breakdown of the trust. Giddens has pointed out to the misunderstanding that arises when we use old concepts to describe new situations-the changing character of the risk.

Risk society exists, Giddens tell us, after nature and after tradition. Living after nature, our previous attempts to control and transform natural processes in the interest of progress begin to reflect back on us. In his chapter Nature Bites Back, John Gray explores the relationship between technology and nature in the light of Chernobyl and the BSE crisis. We become aware of the implications of scientific and technological decisions taken in an effort to harness nuclear energy and to find cheaper ways to feed our cattle. We might not have foreseen the consequences of those decisions, but we were in effect producing the risks now characterizing the kind of society in which we live. In risk society we are confronted with the consequences of our actions.

Robin Grove-White points to the political crisis this generates. While government and politicians fail to recognize the significance of these new risks, a growing public skepticism begins to challenge political legitimacy. What we need is a shared recognition of new forms of risk and uncertainty and a political commitment to widening the political process to include public participation in decisions about risk.

As a way of overcoming this stalemate, the precautionary principle is explored by Stephen Tindale. It is a political mechanism which enables politicians to take precautionary action in situations where there is any reasonable doubt of risk to public health or the environment, without waiting for conclusive scientific proof.

Living after tradition, Giddens tells us, is essentially to be in a world where life is no longer lived as fate. We come to recognize through experience that we can no longer rely on experts to guide us in the choices we make and are forced to make decisions in the light of conflicting information. Science is losing its traditional role as expert adviser.

John Durant and this is why we do not trust politicians and experts: because they do not know how to say that they don’t know, they are ignoring the dynamic, keeping up the façade. As scientific information becomes increasingly ambiguous, there is a strong impulse to turn to what we see as more certain forms of knowledge and understanding, as external reference points which offer more security. Religion, morality and the politics of authority offer one way back to a world we can trust and in which we feel safe.

Patricia Hewitt takes an optimistic look at the impact of the convergence of information and communications technology and its role in generating a new society and a new politics. She argues that the powerful networks involved are inherently democratic. They have the power to destabilize existing social, economic and political structures and to create new ones. Networks generate new forms of political participation through a more open-ended and fluid form of dialogue: new communities across different dimensions of time and space, and new patterns of work which can be empowering, even though they may also generate real insecurities.

Susie Orbach uncovers the internal dynamic which characterizes the politics of risk society, showing that it is the content of relationships between individuals that determines their capacity to thrive and enjoy life, rather than the formal structures that now appear to be breaking down. Politics needs to connect with the way people really live their lives, and enhance it, rather than dictate how they should live.

As politicians search for the key to social cohesion, Ray Pahl’s chapter on friendship offers a new perspective on the kinds of relationship that might provide the social glue they seem to be searching for. He challenges the taken-for-granted idea that families should be the providers of stability and security in society, and suggests that friendship networks can offer a more stable and enabling set of relationships.

Anna Coote points to the political charade in which we engage, putting us in a child-to-adult relationship with out politicians. We expect politicians to answer our questions and protect us from the hazards of life. The politics of risk society, however, requires a relationship between public, experts and politicians in which mutual respect and democratic dialogue replace the blind faith and mutual contempt which have characterized the political process. Authentic or «active» trust, as Giddens has described it, comes from democratic engagement and open dialogue through which all concerned have a stake in the decision-making process. In risk society, she writes, public policy must engage in «long-term planning for uncertainty» in which informed and active citizens enjoy a mature, adult-to-adult relationship with politicians and experts. Such a high-trust democracy moves beyond a retreat into nostalgic authoritarianism or putting all our faith in the market. Beneath the authoritarian response, Coote detects a desire to replace politics, which is about negotiating change, with a semblance of morality which is about conserving absolute values. The challenge is to resist the comfort of reconstructing old certainties and to build a new politics that goes beyond a reliance on moral absolutes - that itself takes a risk and a leap into the unknown.

Risk society is forcing us to make decisions. The politics which asserts old certainties says that other people will make those decisions for us. The politics of risk society is more demanding. It demands active participation through all layers of social, political and economic activity. In risk society, as Martin Woollacott reminds us, risks are not just moments of danger as we forge forward: They are the process itself. To engage with this process, we need a new public policy. They include, as Woollacott suggests, direct and continuous dialogue between the public, experts and politicians about the decisions which lead to risks being taken. They include, as Orbach and Pahl show, a positive understanding of the changing nature of personal and institutional relationships and a direct connection between policy initiatives and the reality of people’s lives. In risk society, we need policy initiatives which give space to a new politics, still emerging, generated by uncertainty, which insists that decisions which affect us are taken in the context of democratic debate.

Pastore, Ferruccio (2001) Reconciling the prince’s two ’arms’: Internal-external security policy coordination in the European Union. EU-ISS Occasional Paper 30, October 2001.

The blurring of the distinction between internal and external security, and the connected impulse towards better coordination between the correspondent policy fields, are among the fundamental structural changes in international relations that have occurred during the last decades. Such overall trends were accentuated and made particularly evident in Western Europe by progress in supranational integration. The gradual emergence of the EU as an area of freedom of circulation has fostered a common perception of internal security priorities and the intensification of technical and political cooperation in this area. In Western Europe, more than elsewhere, the ‘external’ (extra-EU) dimension of ‘internal security threats’ has been increasingly emphasised. Nevertheless, until very recently, surprisingly little attention has been given in the EU to the issue of internal-external security policy coordination. This paper analyses it from two distinct points of view. First [Ch. 2], the institutional dimension is tackled through an overview of the ongoing coordination efforts and the main shortcomings at the different levels of the EU decision-making structure. Subsequently [Ch. 3], the political dimension of internal-external security coordination is considered, mainly through the juxtaposition of the different approaches to European security which tend to prevail in the internal security policy community, on the one side, and in the ‘external relations’ community on the other. Such dualism is illustrated with particular reference to such a crucial test-case as border management in the framework of the enlargement process. Finally [Ch. 4], the prospects for the development of a ‘holistic’ approach to European security are briefly analysed.

Reinares Fernando (Editor), European Democracies Against Terrorism, Governmental Policies and Intergovernmental Cooperation, The Oñati International Institute for the Sociology of Law, 2000;

This book offers, highly valuable information and updated case studies most relevant, and the analysis of various measures usually adopted as part of anti-terrorist governmental policies. On the other hand, beyond the experiences of bilateral cooperation or the assessment of less developed multilateral agreements, this book provides not only an accurate description of the counterterrorism possibilities existing within the EU, but also a substantial evaluative considerations about those factors likely to obstaculize advances in judicial or police cooperation on the matter, as well as about problems concerning the democratic legitimacy of intergovernmental cooperation in this area of internal security defined as common to all member states.

Smith, K.,European Union Foreign Policy in a Changing World, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003

This book provides a clear introduction to the complexities of contemporary European Union foreign policy, and offers a fresh and distinctive perspective on the nature of the EU’s international identity. Opening with a discussion of the Union’s evolution as an international actor, Karen Smith goes on to explore how and why it pursues five core foreign policy objectives, namely: the encouragement of regional cooperation; the advancement of human rights; the promotion of democracy and good governance; the prevention of conflicts; and the fight against international crime. By analysing the various means it has used to achieve these objectives, she considers the extent to which the EU has pursued these goals consistently. She concludes with an assessment of the uniqueness of the EU as a global actor and the effectiveness of its foreign policy, comparing its activities with those of other international agents pursuing similar objectives.