ABSTRACT
Consider the following: the movement across borders of illicit drugs ranging from contraband alcohol and tobacco to ecstasy, cocaine and heroin; expanding transnational markets in vehicles and other stolen goods; the smuggling of nuclear materials; the endeavours of economic migrants, refugees and asylum seekers from eastern Europe and beyond to enter member states of the EU; the organised trafficking of human beings by global criminal enterprises – often to work in the sex industries of Europe's cities; the circulation through the global economy of laundered money and forged currency; the persistence, in different forms, of organised political violence; and outbreaks of ethnic conflict and warfare on the EU's ‘doorstep’ in the Balkans. These threats whirl around our heads, threatening the security and prosperity of (western) Europe and its citizens. They are the criminogenic consequences of a world made up of flows and networks rather than boundaries and fixed points and, as such, repeatedly and decisively outstrip the capacity of any single nation-state to mount or sustain an effective response. The ability of ‘sovereign’ states to accomplish one of their constituent functions – the production of internal order and security – is correspondingly being eroded and undermined.
