ABSTRACT
The Single European Market, the dismantling of frontier controls within the European Union, and the free movement of persons and capital require a closer coordination and cooperation between national law enforcement agencies, as in such a European area criminality is changing and moving very fast. Indeed it seems to be moving faster than police and judicial/prosecutorial action, as criminal justice personnel are often restricted to national boundaries. The sphere of police and judicial cooperation in Europe has experienced huge growth in the last 20 years. There has been considerable research looking at structures for transnational cooperation and the legal dimension of the instruments involved in this domain, as well as many speculations on how it would work in the future. However, very little research has been undertaken on what happens in practice and showing how the instruments are working at present. Moreover, almost nothing has been written from the perspective of the practitioners who have to use these instruments. Most research has taken the perspective of legislators or policy makers, with rare exceptions being, for example, Gallagher (1998) and Sheptycki (2002), who have undertaken work on the Anglo-French border, and Maguer (2004) who has looked at the French-German border.
