The Changing Dynamic of Security in an Enlarged Europe

Objectives

1. To provide an overview of the state of the art in the changing dynamic of security in an enlarged Europe.

2. To assess to what extent three recent changes, namely: (1) the entry into force of the Treaty of Amsterdam; (2) the an increased institutional pluralism at the centre of the JHA’s political arena; and, (3) the emergence of the EU as an area of freedom of movement with a somewhat common perception of internal security priorities and intensification of technical and political co-operation in this area, have modified the landscape of EU internal security and its relationship with external security and foreign policy.

3. To assess how the recent events of 11th September and two recent wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, could have accelerated the general trends outlined in objective number 2 and what new dimensions have also been added, especially in the domain of the link between internal security, defence and foreign affairs.

4. To identify challenges to operationalising an equitable balance between freedom and security as a result of an Europeanisation and Externalisation of internal security in the policy process of Justice and Home Affairs, and to have a Common Foreign Policy coherent with this objective.

5. To evaluate the implications for democratic control and legitimacy in the context of the changing dynamic of security, particularly when exceptional policies are implemented.

6. To assess how enlargement will affect/influence this changing dynamic of security.

7. To train young researchers and practitioners through a series of six training seminars and three expert roundtables which we shall organise in collaboration with all the other workpackage leaders to explain our results and reflection on the different dimensions inherent to a changing security dynamic in Europe.

The data collected and analysis carried out within the framework of this workpackage will be used also to inform the observatory.

Description of work

Our workpackage will build upon the groundwork being carried out in the ELISE and FORNET projects financed by DG Research under the FP5 programme. This workpackage will also rely closely on the work of Workpackages 1, 2, 3, 6, 7 and 14 to assess what impact did Europeanisation and the externalisation of internal security bear on structures, methods and contents of the policy-making process in the field of justice and home affairs.

Our workpackage, like workpackage 6 will start 6 months after the other workpackages so that we can assess what are the policy implications and eventually recommendations to be proposed based on the theoretical/conceptual/polity/legal reviews carried out be our colleagues leading the other substantive workpackages.

Our work will look at the experience of Europe, candidate states to accession as well as neighbouring countries (i.e. the countries included in the Commission Communication of March 2003 on ‘Wider Europe’ and the ‘circle of friends’) 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 (Pastore, 2001).

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. 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 a legitimate field for European co-operation.

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. This expansion of the definition of security continuum was in turn also criticised (see also workpackage 2 for a development of the critique on such).

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.

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 ( see Waever, O. Buzan, B., Keistrup, P. (1993); Huysmans, J. (1995); Bigo, D. (1998); Ceyhan, A. (1999).

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.

If the idea is to promote human rights inside and outside, the common foreign policy of the EU has to bypass national economic interests or internal security ones and to be coherent with the image of «circle of friends».

Our assertion, which will be tested in our research is that 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.

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 (Bigo, 1996 & Anderson, 1995).

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 (Andreas & Price, 2001). 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.

Moreover, the recent events since 11th September 2001 (including the two wars - Afghanistan and Iraq) have accelerated the general trends outlined above and added crucial new dimensions.

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. This will be assessed by examining the partly overlapping intergovernmental cooperative frameworks (Trevi; Schengen; Maastricht’s third pillar), which produced a peculiar, homogeneous and cohesive ‘internal security regime’ (Monar, 2000). The basic features of such security regime which will also be the subject of our examination are 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’.

Each report shall look at policy options and proposes concrete recommendations to decision-makers on the basis of an evaluation of a set of questions surrounding each of the issues listed above.