ABSTRACT
The European Union (EU) frequently stresses its adherence to a concept of security that is not state-centric, that is holistic and oriented to long-term solutions rather than ephemeral containment. Such a philosophy has been severely tested by the challenge of international terrorism. Counter-terrorism today accounts for a vastly greater proportion of the EU’s resources and diplomatic effort than prior to the attacks of 11 September 2001. The more concerted strategies pursued by law enforcement agencies and security services represent probably the best known and most cited case of Europe’s illiberal drift. Sober and measured assessment is required of European attempts to deal
with ‘radicalization’. Governments’ aims to seal off Europe from threats abroad and tighten law enforcement provisions against terrorist acts and extremism within Europe are perfectly understandable and in some measure necessary. Governments can hardly be blamed for responding robustly to the tragic bombings of March 2004 in Madrid and July 2005 in London. The frequent suggestions that Europe’s current counter-terrorism measures represent ‘Orwellian’ state control veer towards sensationalist exaggeration. It is probably inevitable that counter-terrorism will be the Achilles heel of the EU’s claim to liberal internationalism. There is, however, a legitimate question over whether the balance between
the different elements of European counter-terrorist strategies has been appropriate. Liberals themselves have faced a dilemma over this question: does a liberal approach require radicals to be understood and courted or should it compel a staunch confrontation of their illiberalism? The record suggests that European governments are still underinvesting effort and resources in addressing radicalism’s driving causes, as opposed to containing its visible symptoms. Academics debate endlessly over ‘securitization’. Whether or not such a label applies across the board, security and counter-terrorism measures have certainly drifted too far away from the EU’s proclaimed liberal approach. The internal and external dimensions of counter-terrorism are intertwined.
Although this book focuses on foreign policy dimensions, it is vital to understand the way in which the latter are conditioned by policies developed within Europe. The nature and extent of this read-over is contested. Experts disagree
on how far radicalization within Europe is driven by events and political trends beyond its borders. Wise warnings have been issued that the EU should not ‘overdose’ its foreign relations with concerns over terrorism. But it is also proper to enquire whether the EU’s strategies have been sufficiently committed, internationalist and cosmopolitan in nature. It is doubtful whether they have.
Europe burnished its liberal credentials in rejecting the Bush administration’s ‘war on terror’. Yet its own approach to counter-terrorism has not been entirely different. Its own discourse is still all about ‘the fight against terror’ – a semantic distinction. European policy in practice acts as if ‘freedom’ and ‘security’ were trade-offs, rather than the former contributing to the latter. European governments have started from the premise that policy has been too liberal on radicals inside Europe and needs to tighten up. There are real transatlantic differences, in the US’s use of secret prisons, torture and military courts. And President Obama has not completely reversed all of the Bush administration’s hard-line measures on such matters. But the primary focus in much commentary on the unacceptable practices carried out at Guantánamo Bay masks Europe’s own illiberal drift. The EU has agreed on three major packages of counter-terrorist measures:
the Tampere programme of 1999; The Hague programme of 2004; and a third package introduced in the autumn of 2009 (the so-called Stockholm programme). The programmes couch policy as the pursuit of ‘freedom and security’. Between Tampere and The Hague, the onus shifted notably from freedom to security. The Hague programme’s section on ‘strengthening freedom’ is in fact all about security. Commitments are made to strengthen border controls, biometrics and measures against illegal immigration. The programme fails to provide firm guarantees that expulsions of suspected terrorists from Europe are carried out in a way that is compatible with human rights obligations. Security also conquers justice in the European Arrest Warrant. Judicial oversight is weak in ensuring that this protects against unfair extradition and guarantees rights under the new procedure of mutual recognition of arrests made in different member states.1 ‘Freedom’ is presented in the sense of severe and coercive measures being needed to combat external threats to internal EU liberties. The attacks of 9/11 unlocked a plethora of security measures that had been
sitting around gathering dust as proposals seen as too draconian for many years. Many new measures have not been fully codified in legislation. Despite Europe’s objection to the language of the ‘war on terror’, the area where transatlantic cooperation has deepened most appreciably in recent years is that of counter-terrorism. Intelligence and data-sharing between European and US authorities has intensified. A deal on data-sharing with the US was taken from the first to third pillar expressly to circumvent legal restrictions. European governments at the very least turned a blind eye to US extraordinary rendition.
