Thematic Focus: The EU – A New Kind of Security State?
The European Union and its Crises
by Chris Jones and Yasha Macanico
Since the Treaty of Amsterdam in 1999, various crises have served as pretexts for expanding the EU security structures, expanding the power of the EU’s repressive agencies. Politically motivated human rights violations continue to be daily fare and are worsening with the latest “migration crisis” on the EU’s eastern borders.
More Power for Frontex, but no Accountability?
by Jane Kilpatrick
Since 2004, the EU border agency’s resources and mandate have been significantly expanded by four consecutive regulations. However, no adequate mechanisms to counterbalance them with legal or political accountability have followed.
The New Europol Reform
by Chloé Berthélémy and Jesper Lund
The days when the EU police agency answered only to member states for law enforcement cooperation are over. The recent reform of the Europol mandate confirms the trend of granting the agency more executive powers and autonomy.
(E)merging Databases: Digital Borders as Integration Project
by Eric Töpfer
The number of the EU’s large IT systems for the control of borders, migration and crime will double in the coming years. At the same time, the systems are being brought ever closer together with the aim of making them interoperable. Against all odds, the Commission and its agencies are the winners in this development. The losers are, in particular, those who do not have the privilege of European citizenship.
The EU’s Increasing Secret Service Network
by Matthias Monroy
The EU does not possess any administrative competence to coordinate intelligence services. Nevertheless, its institutions cooperate in various ways with such authorities from the member states. Europol is intertwined with this opaque network as well. The new focus on “dangerous persons” also bears intelligence features.
Migration and Militarization
by Jacqueline Andres
Once dubbed a civilian power, the EU is transforming into a security union. The threats that are assumed there are driving corresponding research and development. Likewise, regarding illegalized migration, the security industry is presenting itself as the provider of solutions for political, social and environmental problems it helps to create.
The Refoulement Union
by Matthias Lehnert
The continuity of human rights violations on Europe’s external borders is a crisis of the rule of law – but it is not named as such. Instead, a discourse is becoming hegemonic that relativizes the existence and the scope of the principle of non-refoulement and is calling into question the idea itself.
Non-thematic Contributions
A Windfall for the Enemies of Freedom?
by Matthias Jakubowski and Clara Bünger
At the end of 2021, the AfD-affiliated Desiderius Erasmus Foundation (DES) applied for 7.85 million euros to the Budget Committee of the German Bundestag for the year 2022. It would be the first time that a political foundation close to the extreme right-wing party spectrum is funded with state funds.
A Brief History of the German Federal Police
by Dirk Burczyk
The development of the Federal Border Police and the later Federal Police is closely intertwined with the history of the Federal Republic – from the struggle for state sovereignty and the various conjunctures of “domestic security” to the expansion of the federal government’s ability to act and its resources at the expense of the states.
Emotion and Affect in Digital Policing Work
by Ben Hundertmark
In social networks, police authorities participate in the emotional charging of their institutions: They seek contact with citizens with humorous and personalized communication offers. The relationship between state organizations and civil society is being renegotiated in the digital space. Using the example of two police authorities, this article shows how the police use social networks to create an emotional offer.