ABSTRACT
This chapter summarises the main findings of the book's analysis of the driving forces behind integration in the field of EU police cooperation between 1976 and 2022. It finds that the coexistence of seemingly contradictory processes of differentiation and integration has often been the result of deliberate strategies of differentiated integration to circumvent short-term political resistance or structural obstacles and solves collective action problems in the long run. The historical analysis further shows that interdependencies in the fight against common threats mattered most as driver of state integration preferences in the early stages of European police cooperation. More recently, supranational policy entrepreneurship has emerged as key influence of pro-integration attitudes among Member States and can be expected to grow in importance. This holds especially true for Europol itself as well as the European Commission. Politicisation, against it, provides windows of opportunity and acts rather as amplifier of integration pressure from interdependencies and policy entrepreneurs. Finally, the asymmetrical effects of all three drivers explain the divergence in governmental attitudes towards integration and can thus help account for the persistence of parallel processes of differentiation and integration.
