ABSTRACT
As the 20th century was waning, new political and economic challenges appeared at
the core of the European agenda. If, for decades, the European member states had
committed the bulk of their legal and political resources to dealing with the inter-
dependence effects created by the single market, this was no longer possible at the
end of the 1990s. The world’s geopolitical configuration had changed and the
European political space needed new instruments to tackle, among other things,
cross-border crime, terrorism, human trafficking and money laundering.
