ABSTRACT
However, in spite of all hurdles posed by history, traditional understandings of the role of the state and national constitutional frameworks there are prominent indicators today that an EU governance in the internal security domain has become a reality. Through the treaty reforms of Amsterdam and Lisbon, the Member States have given the EU a formal mandate with the necessary competences to act in the internal security domain, generally by establishing ‘security’ as one of the fundamental public goods of the AFSJ as a fundamental EU treaty objective according to Article 3(2) TEU and more specifically by providing in Article 67(3) TFEU for the Union ‘to ensure a high level of security’ through a broad range of measures in the fields of police cooperation and judicial cooperation in criminal matters. Not only have the main EU institutions – the EU Council (including several specialized committees such as the COSI2), the European Commission, and the European Parliament – all become major actors in EU decision making on internal security matters, but also has the EU created a range of agencies – in particular Europol, Eurojust, and Frontex – which deals specifically with a number of internal security-related tasks such as threat law enforcement data sharing, threat assessments, and support for operational cooperation and coordination between national police or judicial authorities. Finally, a considerable corpus of internal security-related legislation has also been adopted – ranging from major mutual recognition instruments, such as the 2002 Framework Decision on the European Arrest Warrant (EAW) (2002/ 584/JHA), to the automated exchange of law enforcement data, such as the 2008 ‘Prüm Decision’ (2008/615/JHA). If one adds to that by now well-established operational procedures for the deployment of ‘Joint Investigation Teams’ (Council of the European Union 2011) and of ‘European Border Guard Teams’ in line with Article 3b of the amended Frontex Regulation (Regulation [EU] No 1168/2011) as well the numerous EUfunded training programmes in the fields of police and criminal justice cooperation, the now existing internal security governance framework can be regarded as relatively dense given the persisting primary competences of the Member States in this domain and the fact that most of it has only been put into place since the Treaty of Amsterdam of 1999.
