Opening Remarks: Presentation of the CHALLENGE Research Project and the Observatory

Elspeth Guild, Thierry Balzacq and Sergio Carrera opened the conference by welcoming all the speakers and the participants. They focused their opening remarks on the importance of the CHALLENGE research project (The Changing Landscape of European Liberty and Security) as a tool for setting high standards of intellectual debate around security and liberty in Europe. Trough its Network of 21 University, CHALLENGE represents a valuable instrument for policy recommendations, which contributes to the development of an EU Area of Freedom Security and Justice. CHALLENGE is a «research project» funded by the Sixth Framework Research Programme (Theme 6.1.1 of Priority 7, «Citizens and Governance in a Knowledge based society») of the Directorate-General for Research of the European Commission. It runs over a period of five years starting from 1st June 2004.

CHALLENGE seeks to facilitate a more responsive and responsible assessment of rules and practices of security. It examines the implications of these practices for civil liberties, human rights and social cohesion in an enlarged Europe. The project analyses the illiberal practices of liberal regimes and challenges their justification on grounds of emergency and necessity. Among the objectives of the project the following may be highlighted: To understand the merging between internal and external security and evaluate the changing character of the relationship between liberty and security in Europe; To analyse the role of different institutions in charge of security and their current transformations; To facilitate and enhance a new interdisciplinary network of scholars who have been influential in the re-conceptualising and analysis of many of the theoretical, political, sociological, legal and policy implications of new forms of violence and political identity; and to bring together a new interdisciplinary network of scholars in an integrated project focusing on the state of exception as enacted through illiberal practices and forms of resistance to it.

Furthermore, they stressed the considerable added value of the CHALLENGE OBSERVATORY, an open and accessible tool conceived to follow up the evolution of the concept of security, tracing the major transformations in the field of civil liberties, human rights and social cohesion. The OBSERVATORY is an open and accessible tool whose main purpose is to follow in detail the changes that are occurring to the concept of security and the relationship between danger and freedom. It maps the different missions and activities of the main institutions that are charged with the function of protection. In addition, the OBSERVATORY traces the major transformations of the relations between these institutions and addresses the question of the merging between internal and external security and between policing and military functions. The resulting database is fully accessible to all actors involved in the area of freedom, security and justice.

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