The terrorist attacks in Paris and Brussels highlight an important dilemma for the European Union. Over the past two decades, the E.U. has made it much easier for people to travel across borders, especially among countries which had signed the Schengen agreement.
However, the E.U. has not created very comprehensive arrangements for police cooperation, which might allow the police to tackle cross-border crime, including terrorism. In the early part of the last century, the U.S. faced increased challenges from criminals using cars to travel from one jurisdiction to another. This helped build a case for expanding the role of the FBI and other federal institutions.
Europe faces similar challenges, but doesn’t have an FBI. Here’s why.
Countries find it hard to cooperate over policing
National policing activities are often highly sensitive because they are so closely tied with the notion of state sovereignty. Max Weber famously defined the state as the organization that had a monopoly on legitimate violence in a given territory. In other words, the sovereign state is the organization that is able to use violence to enforce its rules and have its violence accepted as legitimate by its population. When states cooperate over policing matters, they are pooling a key aspect of sovereign power and, in effect, weakening their control over violence.
The European Union is still an organization composed of independent states rather than a true federal system. Its constituent states have been happy to cooperate over economic matters, and even many social issues, but have been reluctant to give up control over policing. Over time, they have started cooperating more on policing matters, but slowly and reluctantly.
Read the full piece at The Washington Post.
- Publication Type:Other Writing
- Publication Date:03/22/2016