The merging between internal and external (in)security. The European public policies regarding transnational political violence and their impact on civil liberties

«What does it mean to have a European point of view on security and state of exception?» Didier Bigo asked. «Is it possible to speak about transnational political violence and war as a solution to put an end to transnational political violence?» How the European Union may have a specific policy concerning transnational political violence not derivative from the US agenda ? In this regard, Bigo spoke about the current blurring between the concepts of war and crime and the increasing discourse concerning collaboration between «security agencies and institutions» at the national and western level. These institutions are police, intelligence services, military professionals, private security institutions... They are often divided inside their own country but the pressure is to have more collaboration both at the national, European and Western levels which imply to have some centralization ? How far can we go in that route ? We need to find out first if and how these professionals of security are acting together, if they believe themselves about the categories they use as global terrorism or global organized crime. Furthermore we need to think about the impact of the challenging relationship between internal and external security. If it is necessary to take into account the transformation of violence, it is also important to avoid than the intelligence services at the cross road of the merging between internal and external security invade with their logic the rules inside the state and the rule of law, as well as they cannot have the possibility to infringe the international human rights. The discourse about global terrorism and global threat are often the mask to present old solutions as new solutions to a new problem.

Didier Bigo went on to say how practices change in Europe. The concept of the foreigner is under construction and the question is whether this category still exists. There is no longer a strict division line between the state-citizen and ‘the other’. What is to be a foreigner now? Concerning surveillance, Bigo stated that the current situation is what he calls «ban opticon». It is not like a ‘Big Brother’, but people are happy to be under surveillance because surveillance is considered to be for the other. Instead of asking whether we should question surveillance, we should ask: «who is under surveillance?» This relates to the question: «who is normal and who is not?» as only the abnormal people will be under surveillance. At present surveillance is a double process about space as well as certain specific persons ad groups. All the people circulating will be under surveillance. He underlined that this is a serious issue to think about also concerning the enlargement process and the neighboring policies; how far are the frontiers of the EU? Bigo stressed that it is important in this respect to have a good relation with the neighbors; not to put them under suspicion.

He also addressed the EU reaction to the 11th September 2001 events. The US changed its point of view about the world, and the EU adopted the same US view. We should question here why this is like that, and whether we have a different vision of what happened on 11th September 2001. The framing of that day could have been different, since the sharing of emotions with the US does not say that institutions cannot act differently than the US.

He stresses the difference about time. The US is obsessed with the next bombing and driven by the worst case scenario and an "astrological" vision of the future covered by the mask of a "scientific knowledge" of the intelligence service. Is there any possibility to prevent the future? The danger is that suspicion comes first and reality after. This has resulted in the call for ‘preventive and pre-emptive defense’ which is justified by this discourse of the «worst case scenario» which has no other limit than the political imagination of the "experts". Anticipation on the future is thus nowadays based upon suspicion but neutralised by the recourse to high technology to give it more credibility. This stance also justified the involvement of the military and intelligence services on issues of internal security. European Union is divided. Some governments and agencies share the US point of view but others are more driven by the knowledge of past form of violence and by a judiciary vision. They rely less in technology and more in human sources. They know the danger of overreacting to such attacks.

At the EU level, the institutions of the Commission, the Council have not always the same policies, especially regarding the different pillars and transnational networks of different professionals (policemen, magistrates or military) emerged in different arenas with different solutions. This structural difference with the US needs to be accepted as such and is also positive. The US view that the EU is a pre-state and not yet a full sovereign subject is erroneous and leads to misconception. So one key question is to know if the EU future is different from a state, even a federal state ? Bigo explained that in the EU we have competition between institutions and complexity on institutional levels and that heterogeneity is positive. Competition for a better protection of individuals and human rights is an interesting issue as we can see with the role of the European Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg vis-à-vis the European Court of Justice in Luxembourg.

Bigo finished by underlining that in depth research is needed on political and security issues. In EU countries a lot of research has been done, but there seems to be competitiveness between professionals in politics and professionals on security issues about framing the truth concerning the major threats and it affects our civil liberties. So we need to assess the different statements to avoid an increase of fear and insecurity in the name of security. It will be one of the objective of the observatory of Challenge.