Securing Europe: European Security in an American Epoch

New Security Challenges Series

General Editor: Stuart Croft, Professor of International Security in the
Department of Politics and International Studies at the University of Warwick,
UK, and Director of the ESRC’s New Security Challenges Programme.

The last decade demonstrated that threats to security vary greatly in their
causes and manifestations, and that they invite interest and demand responses
from the social sciences, civil society and a very broad policy community.
In the past, the avoidance of war was the primary objective, but with the
end of the Cold War the retention of military defence as the centrepiece of
international security agenda became untenable. There has been, therefore,
a signifi cant shift in emphasis away from traditional approaches to security
to a new agenda that talks of the softer side of security, in terms of human
security, economic security and environmental security. The topical New
Security Challenges Series refl ects this pressing political and research agenda.

Titles include:
Jon Coaffee, David Murakami Wood and Peter Rogers
THE EVERYDAY RESILIENCE OF THE CITY
How Cities Respond to Terrorism and Disaster

Christopher Farrington (editor)
GLOBAL CHANGE, CIVIL SOCIETY AND THE NORTHERN IRELAND
PEACE PROCESS
Implementing the Political Settlement

Kevin Gillan, Jenny Pickerill and Frank Webster
ANTI-WAR ACTIVISM
New Media and Protest in the Information Age

Andrew Hill
RE-IMAGINING THE WAR ON TERROR
Seeing, Waiting, Travelling

Andrew Hoskins and Ben O’Loughlin
TELEVISION AND TERROR
Confl icting Times and the Crisis of News Discourse

Bryan Mabee
THE GLOBALIZATION OF SECURITY
State Power, Security Provision and Legitimacy

Janne Haaland Matlary
EUROPEAN UNION SECURITY DYNAMICS
In the New National Interest

Michael Pugh, Neil Cooper and Mandy Turner (editors)
CRITICAL PERSPECTIVES ON THE POLITICAL ECONOMY OF
PEACEBUILDING

Brian Rappert and Chandré Gould (editors)
BIOSECURITY
Origins, Transformations and Practices

Brian Rappert
BIOTECHNOLOGY, SECURITY AND THE SEARCH FOR LIMITS
An Inquiry into Research and Methods

Brian Rappert (editor)
TECHNOLOGY AND SECURITY
Governing Threats in the New Millennium

Lisa Watanabe
SECURING EUROPE
European Security in an American Epoch

New Security Challenges Series
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Preface

vii

Acknowledgements

viii

List of Abbreviations

Part I Europeanization: Analytical Framework

1 Introduction

A sociological institutionalist framework

2 A Sociological Institutionalist Approach to Europeanization

Introduction 14

Review of existing approaches

A sociological institutionalist approach

Europeanization 37

The co-determination of national and European
institutional orders

Conclusion 49

Part II The Case Studies

3 The European Security and Defence Policy

Introduction 53

Reframing defence: The emergence of the ESDP

Europeanization of military security

Transatlantic security relations

Conclusion 87

4 Justice and Home Affairs Post-September 11

Introduction 91

Europeanization of ‘Internal’ security prior to 9/11

Europeanization of ‘Internal’ security post-9/11

108

Reshaping of domestic institutional orders

112

Transatlantic security relations

119

Conclusion 123

5 The Stability Pact for South Eastern Europe

127

Introduction 127

From reactive crisis management to long-term
conflict prevention

129

Contents

vii

Preface

Cooperation between European Union (EU) member states has grown
steadily over the last decade. The EU is now active in crisis man-
agement, policing, intelligence, and border management. Several
decades ago, this would have been taboo given the importance of
these areas to traditional conceptions of state sovereignty. This book
is an attempt to account for how these developments were possible.
In it, I employ the concept of Europeanization to account for increased
institutionalization of cooperation between member states in the
area of security. Europeanization implies that changes in institutional
practices take place not as a result of the rational egoism of states, but
as a result of the reworking of perceptual and normative frameworks.
The implications of Europeanization in each of these areas for the
transatlantic security relationship are also explored.

The book would never have come to fruition without the con-

structive comments and support of Prof. Dr. David Mutimer (York
University, Toronto), Prof. Dr. Leo Panitch (York University), Prof. Dr.
David Dewitt (York University), Prof. Dr. David Leyton-Brown (York
University), Prof. Dr. Alexander Moens (Simon Fraser University,
Vancouver), Nicolas Plattner and Youssef Ouadi. Each deserves spe-
cial thanks.

Lisa Watanabe

List of Abbreviations

AD Action

Directe

AEPC

Association of European Police Colleges

AET Agency

Establishment

Team

AFJS

Area Freedom, Justice and Security

AFSOUTH Allied

Forces

Southern

Europe

BAe British

Aerospace

BfV Bundesamt

für

Verfassungsschutz

Command, control and communications

command, control, communications, computers
and intelligence

CATS

Article 36 Committee

CEE

Central and Eastern Europe

CEPOL European

Police

College

CESDP

Common European Security and Defence Policy

CFSP

Common Foreign and Security Policy

CINCENT

Commander in Chief Allied Forces Central Europe

CJTF

Combined Joint Task Force

CIA Central

Intelligence

Agency

COREPER

Committee of Permanent Representatives

CRW Counter-Revolutionary

Wing

DEA Drugs

Enforcement

Agency

DST

Direction de la Surveillance du Territoire

DTIB

Defence Technology and Industrial Base

EADS

European Aeronautic, Defence, and Space
Company

EAPC Euro-Atlantic

Partnership

Council

EC European

Community

ECAP

European Capability Action Plan

ECJ

European Court of Justice

ECOFIN EU

Finance

ECST

European Convention on the Suppression of
Terrorism

EDA European

Defence

Agency

EDC European

Defence

Community

EJN European

Judicial

Network

EMU European

Monetary

Union

EMPF

European Multinational Protection Force

EPC European

Political

Cooperation

ERI SEE

The SEE Education Reform Implementation
Initiative in view of the Accession and the
Stabilisation and Association Processes

ESDI

European Security and Defence Identity

ESDP

European Security and Defence Policy

ESRP

European Security Research Programme

ESS European

Security

Strategy

EU European

Union

EUMC

European Union Military Committee

EUMS

European Union Military Staff

EUPM

European Union Police Mission

EUROPOL European

Police

Office

EUROJUST

European Judicial Cooperation Unit

FBI

Federal Bureau of Investigation

FCO

Foreign and Commonwealth Office

FTAs

Free Trade Agreements

FRY

Federal Republic of Yugoslavia

FYROM

Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia

FRG

Federal Republic of Germany

HLG High

Level

Group

x List of Abbreviations

HTF

Headline Goal Task Force

IMF International

Monetary

Foundation

IR International

Relations

Group of Eight (leading industrialised nations)

GAD Global

Approach

Deployability

GAERC

General Affairs and External Relations Council

GIGN

Groupe d’Intervention de la Gendarmerie
Nationale

GPS global

positioning

system

GSG9 Grenzschutzgruppe

IAG Informal

Advisory

Group

ISTAR

Intelligence, Surveillance, Target Acquisition and
Reconnaisance

JHA

Justice and Home Affairs

MAPE

Multinational Advisory Police Element

MEPA

Central European Police Academy

MI5 British

Secret

Service

MoD

British Ministry of Defence

MRAV

Multi-role Armoured Vehicle Programme

NAC North

Atlantic

Council

NACC

North Atlantic Cooperation Council

NAD National

Armaments

Directors

NATO

North Atlantic Treaty Organization

NBC

Nuclear, Biological and Chemical Weapons

NBPA

Nordic Baltic Police Academy

NEBEDACPOL Cooperative arrangement between chiefs of police

of The Netherlands, Belgium and Germany

NRF

NATO Response Force

OCCAR

Organisme Conjoint de Coopération en Matière
d’Armament (Organisation for Joint Armament
Cooperation)

OCTN

Organised Crime Training Network

List of Abbreviations xi

OECD

Organisation for Economic Co-operation and
Development

OMC

Open Method of Cooperation

OSCE

Organisation for Security and Cooperation in
Europe

PCTF

EU Police Chiefs Task Force

PfP Partnership

for

Peace

PJHQs Permanent

Joint

Headquarters

PPEWU

Policy Planning and Early Warning Unit

PNR Passenger

Name

Record

PSC Political

Security

Committee

PWGOT

Police Working Group on Terrorism

QMV Qualified

Majority

Voting

RAID

Recherche, Assistance, Intervention et Dissuasion

R&D

research and development

RELEX

External Relations Directorate General of the
European Commission

RMA

Revolution in Military Affairs

SACEUR

Supreme Allied Command Europe

SDECE

Direction de Documentation Extérieure et de
Contre-Espionage

SEA Single

European

Act

SECI

South-East European Co-operative Initiative

SEE South

Eastern

Europe

SEEI

South Eastern Europe Initiative

SEK Specialeinsatzkommandos

SHAPE

Supreme Headquarters Allied Powers Europe

SIRENE

Supplementary Information Request at the
National Entry

SIS Schengen

Information

System

SIS II

Second generation SIS

xii List of Abbreviations

SO13 Scotland

Yard’s

Anti-Terror

Squad

Stability Pact for South Eastern Europe

SPTF

Stability Pact Task Force on Trafficking in Human
Beings

TACIS

EU Technical Assistance to the Commonwealth of
Independent States

TEU

Treaty of the European Union

TREVI

Terrorism, Radicalism, Extremism and
International Violence Group

TWG

Trade Working Group

UAV

Unmanned aerial vehicle

UK United

Kingdom

UN United

Nations

UNDP

United Nations Development Programme

UNPROFOR

United Nations Protection Force

US United

States

VISA

Visa Information System

VISION

Visa Inquiry System In an Open-border Network

WEAG

Western European Armaments Group

WEU

Western European Union

List of Abbreviations xiii

Introduction

As one night of riots followed another in Paris suburbs and elsewhere
in France in late 2005, the enormity of the problem they reflected
soon became evident. The impoverishment and marginalization of
immigrant communities has reached a crisis point. This is, of course,
not a specifically French problem. As Timothy Garton Ash argues,
it is an all-European problem: ‘Unrest in Germany, bombings in
London, and assassinations in The Netherlands are all signs of the
façade of European multiculturalism cracking under the pressures
of its underlying realities.’

To some extent there is recognition that

most member states of the European Union (EU) have large, dissatis-
fied communities of immigrant dissent. The 2004 Hague Programme,
which is nothing short of a project in the area of ‘internal’ security
comparable to that of the Single Market, calls for a European frame-
work for the integration of immigrants to be drawn up. Were this to
lead to greater cooperation in this area, it would be highly unlikely
that we would see identical responses to the problem. Different forms
of nationalism within member states would determine the precise
way in which governments react to and transpose such a framework,
just as the French government responded in a particularly ‘French
way’ to the crisis, informed by its egalitarian form of nationalism.
Indeed, integration in the areas of ‘internal’ and ‘external’ security
is characterized by such a two-way process or co-determination
of national and EU-level institutional orders. This co-determining
dimension of European integration cannot, however, be perceived by
simply looking at measures agreed at European Council summits. It
is necessary to examine the construction of common ‘ways of going

4 Securing Europe

about things’ at the EU level and to discern corresponding institu-
tional adaptation within member states.

In the security field, which I define in broad terms along with the

EU as extending beyond military threats from a state to include a
number of transnational threats including terrorism, the prolifera-
tion of weapons of mass destruction, organized crime, regional con-
flict, and state failure,

cooperation between EU member states has

grown steadily since fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989. The 1992 Treaty
of the European Union (TEU) put in place the legal provisions with
which to enable this development by establishing a framework for
a Common Foreign and Security Policy (CFSP).

While the issue of

defence was set aside at that time, the Treaty left open the possibility
of framing a common defence policy. Lacking military capabilities of
its own, the TEU envisaged that the EU would call upon the Western
European Union (WEU)

to plan and implement military measures

on its behalf, thereby making the WEU the effective defence arm of
the EU, at least for the time being.

However, the crises in the former Yugoslavia dealt a harsh blow to

the aspirations of the EU’s CFSP and the WEU, and had the effect of
propelling the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) to the fore.
The dependence of Europeans on NATO for out-of-area contingencies,
as well as the Alliance’s rapid reconfiguration of its military structures,
resulted in NATO and not the EU playing a leading role in crisis man-
agement in the Balkans throughout the 1990s. Moreover, attempts
that were made to enhance the EU’s role in this area took place within
the framework of NATO, by means of the WEU’s participation in
Alliance operations, rather than within the context of the EU.

Since the late 1990s, the EU, nevertheless, has made significant

progress towards consolidating its role in the security domain. While
it was over-shadowed by NATO in the area of crisis management
to its east and southeast, the EU has engaged in long-term conflict
prevention. As the crisis in Kosovo came to a head in 1999, the EU
launched the Stability Pact (SP), conceived along similar lines to an
earlier initiative that focused on Central and Eastern Europe (CEE)
countries, which encouraged their respective governments to work
together to settle political problems, such as the treatment of minori-
ties, and by investing heavily in economic reconstruction. The SP
has vastly augmented the EU’s role in the Balkans and represents a
significant development in its overall role as a security actor.

Introduction 5

In addition, the late 1990s saw the EU create the European Security

and Defence Policy (ESDP), which led to a transfer of competency
from the WEU to the EU in the conduct of crisis-management opera-
tions. The governments and heads of EU member states committed
themselves to supporting such a policy with institutions and capa-
bilities designed to permit them to act on behalf of shared security
interests, autonomous of the US and NATO when necessary. To this
end, the EU has established a number of supranational bodies with
which to support the ESDP, as well as initiated a process through
which to establish the military capabilities with which to carry out a
range of missions. Improving European military capabilities in light
of advances in weapons technology and post-Cold War reductions in
defence budgets has also increased the momentum behind common
procurement and arms programmes, which inevitably have become
linked to defence industrial issues, as well as the broader economic
considerations. The EU’s ‘strategic’ objectives also have undergone
further elaboration with the EU’s Security Strategy (ESS), published
in 2003.

Increased cooperation has not only taken place in the areas of con-

flict prevention and crisis management. Formalized cooperation in the
area of policing, intelligence and criminal justice got underway some-
what earlier, within the context of the removal of internal frontier
controls within the Schengen area in the early 1990s. Cooperation in
these areas experienced their most significant advances with the 1992
TEU, which created a new pillar of EU competence in the area of Justice
and Home Affairs (JHA), thereby increasingly involving Brussels-based
officials and the Council of Ministers in law enforcement matters. The
1997 Amsterdam Treaty ushered in a new treaty chapter on the ‘area
of freedom, security and justice’ (AFSJ). As a result, all member states’
police, customs and judicial authorities now fall under one, clearly
defined, legally based authority framework that has responsibility in
this field. Not only does the EU have a legal basis for common action,
but also more systematic regulation of the configuration and deploy-
ment of ‘internal’ security apparatuses. It also extended the degree of
influence that Brussels-based policy practitioners have in this policy
area.

The September 11 attacks and the subsequent agreement upon a

common definition of terrorism have helped further to strengthen
police and judicial cooperation, notably with the creation of a

6 Securing Europe

European Arrest Warrant (EAW), which has given the EU a role in the
area of criminal justice that it hitherto lacked. The EU’s intelligence
function has also been expanded. The exchange of information and
intelligence between member states’ police and intelligence services
now takes place via a newly created anti-terrorism unit within the
European Police Office (EUROPOL), as well as in an informal network.
In addition to this expanded intelligence capacity, EUROPOL has
also been given the power to participate in pre-criminal investigation
intelligence gathering, as well as full-blown, multi-national criminal
investigations. In addition, measures aimed at guarding the EU’s
external borders have also been reinforced.

These developments have not only brought significant changes

within the EU, but also have inevitably modified the EU’s relation-
ship with the US. As a result of the ESDP, NATO’s monopoly on
decision-making and political control of military operations carried
out by European states is no longer as assured as it once was. This
tends to cause considerable unease in Washington, despite US calls
for increased burden-sharing. The traditional bases of institutional-
ized US power in the Euro-Atlantic security arena, long-dominated
by NATO, appear to be politically more difficult to maintain as new
institutional ties are being formed between EU member states in the
political-military domain. Moves to consolidate a European defence
industry and to further joint procurement are also likely to follow.
The EU is now the strongest force for change in the Balkans due to
the creation of the SP, whereas the US had overshadowed its role
in the early 1990s. Yet EU–US collaboration is also growing and, in
some instances, becoming more formalized in the areas of anti-ter
rorism intelligence, law enforcement, and border management. The
fight against terrorism appears to be providing a common moral
imperative for the national security state in the Atlantic area, as well
as a basis for cooperation between European and American states in
the absence of the Soviet Union and the decline of state socialism.

These developments represent a significant shift in emphasis when

compared with the greater part of the post-Second World War period.
The intersection of the rehabilitation of Europe, the revival of lib-
eral capitalism and the East-West stand-off produced a high degree
of consensus about the general interest and a similarity between
European and American state practices in political-military and
political-economic fields. In the military sphere, NATO provided a

Introduction 7

framework within which US leadership and European states’ depend-
ency in the political-military field was largely accepted. Military ties
developed within the context of the Alliance were complemented
by an immense network of both formal and informal ties between
European and American intelligence agencies, which also served as
an instrument for the expansion of US power and influence abroad.

The strength of these linkages, of course, depended on the extent
to which the notion of Atlantic unity resonated with the strategic
cultures of individual European national contexts.

No direct organi-

zational link existed between the EC/EU and the US in these areas of
‘internal’ security.

During this time, the EU also had no security or defence policy of

its own. A number of attempts to strengthen the EC’s role in interna-
tional politics were made, however, and these did begin to establish
a spirit of cooperation. The 1950 Pleven Plan envisaged the creation
of a European army attached to the political institutions of a united
Europe. The participants of such an army would commit themselves
to the defence of Europe under a Supreme Allied Commander in
times of conflict. In accordance with this, the creation of the post of a
European defence minister was proposed. The Plan also anticipated a
European Council of Ministers with a single defence budget and joint
arms procurement. However, the plan met with sufficient opposition
to prevent it from being realized. What eventually emerged in the
European Defence Community (EDC) treaty was less supranational
than the Pleven Plan. The EDC was to have a close relationship with
NATO. The explicit link between NATO and the emergent EDC was
established through Article 4 of the North Atlantic Treaty, which
implied a commitment to consult together. The plan, however, failed
and it was not until a decade later that defence would again come
under discussion. In the early 1960s, France made various propos-
als, some involving a common foreign and defence policy, with the
aim of breaking Europe’s dependency on NATO/US assets, as well as
reconstructing Europe by transforming it into a voluntary union of
independent states. However, these proposals also failed to garner
enough support to get off the ground.

In the 1970s, a renewed interest in the issue of security and defence

was stimulated by the Genscher-Colombo proposals, which arose from
increasing dissatisfaction with US leadership and subsequent concern
to reinforce Europe’s capacity to act as a single force in world affairs.

8 Securing Europe

The concept of European political cooperation (EPC) was, therefore,
defined as an attempt to align the foreign policies of the EC member
states, while respecting their national sovereignty. It had no legal basis
in treaty and was thus an exercise in cooperation and coordination,
rather than the creation of a common foreign policy. As a consultative
platform, it did, nevertheless, encourage a ‘habit of consultation’
between member states on foreign policy matters, though defence
was still left aside. Legal status was conferred on EPC by its inclusion
in the 1986 Single European Act

and it was, in many respects, the

forerunner of the CFSP.

The EU also lacked a formal role in the area of ‘internal’ security,

though cooperation between EC member states’ law enforcement,
intelligence and border control authorities did take place and grew
out of informal, ad hoc arrangements that existed outside the EC
framework. The majority of cooperation took place within intergov-
ernmental coordinating networks, which were set up to facilitate
political cooperation between interior ministries, as well as coopera-
tion between police forces at an operational level. The 1985 Schengen
Agreement and the 1990 Schengen Implementation Agreement were
concerned with short-term ways of counteracting the relaxation of
border controls, as well as provisions for cross-border ‘hot pursuits’
and the exchange of information, and were also agreed outside the
EC framework and failed to include all of the EC member states.
Intelligence links were also informal. Where a limited degree of judi-
cial cooperation existed, political differences, particularly in relation
to the definition of terrorism, prevented the EU from developing a
criminal justice function of its own.

How then were developments since the end of the Cold War

made possible? Many observers, as well as practitioners, interpret
them in terms of states joining forces in order to fulfil fundamental
tasks made more difficult in the context of altered regional and
global contexts. This is particularly marked in relation to the dis-
course on ‘internal’ security. An increasingly ‘borderless’ world in
which criminal networks can flourish by escaping the control of
individual states is, for example, frequently cited as justification for
greater coordination of policing across Europe, especially against
the backdrop of the removal of internal borders between the major-
ity of EU member states. Viewing these developments as the result
of the rational calculations of states, however, obscures a number of

Introduction 9

crucial dimensions of the European integration process. Contrary
to what one might expect, informal and/or decentralized networks,
even in areas of ‘high’ politics, such as defence, have played an
important role in framing cross-border cooperation between EU
member states. They have been able to do so due to the nature
of the EU governance structure, which has enabled fragments of
the state to affect the evolution of the integration project in areas
deemed paramount to state sovereignty.

Cooperation within the second pillar – the CFSP and the ESDP –

and parts of the third pillar – JHA – of the EU is governed by so-
called soft law, i.e. by the establishment of ‘best practices’ and peer
reviews. This governance structure brings together officials from
member states and, to some extent, the Commission, in combi-
nation with a variety of private or semi-public bodies to discuss
common ‘solutions’ to perceived problems and to evaluate progress
in relation to the implementation of treaty provisions. Within
these committees and working groups the ‘technical’ details of
treaty provisions, which often initially remain vague for practical
reasons, are worked out and recommendations for further coopera-
tion are made. In addition to these policy networks, new EU-level
bodies, such as EUROPOL and the European independent legal
body (EUROJUST) have also been established to facilitate further
cooperation by creating a network of representatives from national
police and judicial authorities, facilitating exchange of informa-
tion and, in the case of EUROPOL, intelligence. The key actors are
thus not just governments acting on behalf of states, but mid-level
officials active in decentralized policy networks. These are, in fact,
the actors engaged in forming common sets of social practices,
which help to form a new institutional order.

Once this is recognized, it becomes possible to ‘see’ an aspect of

the integration process that cannot be captured merely by looking
at provisions enshrined in treaty. The establishment of an institu-
tional order takes place not only at the EU level, but it also implies
modifications at the national level. Greater institutionalization of
cooperation at the regional level leads to the creation of common
ways ‘going about things’ that help to shape the evolution of insti-
tutional orders at the national level. This co-determining aspect
of integration is related to the way in which actors involved in
institution-building within transnational networks conceive of the

10 Securing Europe

challenges facing the EU economy and emerging polity, and how
they act on them. Transnational networks of security practitioners
oriented towards finding ‘solutions’ to common ‘problems’ help to
direct developments that eventually lead to greater standardization
of working practices and the deployment of resources within some
of the most sensitive areas of state practice. While this implies a
reduction in the differences between national institutional orders,
the process of transformation underway should not be confused
with convergence. Responses to commonly-defined problems vary,
as alluded to at the outset of this chapter; embedded conceptions of
the role of the military and the police, civil liberties, and the nature
of a particular country’s relationship with the US, for example, con-
dition the processes by which state security apparatuses are main-
tained or changed and thus the specificities of a country’s response
to ‘Europe’.

In short, depicting European integration in the field of security

as the result of unitary member states, coherently pursuing pre-
formulated national interests would simply not allow us to com-
prehend the importance of security professionals, the incremental
formation of national preferences within the context of integration
and the co-constitution of European and national institutional orders.
Yet accounts of post-Cold War developments in this domain that rely
on the preferred, traditional terms of International Relations (IR) theo-
rizing tend to do just that. In addition, many of these accounts fail to
examine the impact of the framing of the relationship between eco-
nomic and security issues, for example, on the institutionalization of
cooperation in the security domain.

Analyses that do highlight the

way in which various understandings of the altered regional and glo-
bal economic environment may be encouraging further cooperation
between EU member states in the area of security are largely found in
law enforcement, intelligence and police studies and, consequently,
they tend to focus solely on developments in the area of JHA.

A sociological institutionalist framework

This study attempts to contribute to a better understanding of the
integration process in the European security field. Developments in
this area are particularly interesting, because they affect aspects of
the state that are considered fundamental to traditional conceptions

Introduction 11

of state sovereignty and, in the case of the ESDP, involve ‘high’ politics.
The rapidity of developments is all the more suprising, since the second
and, until fairly recently, third pillars of the EU are intergovernmental,
concerning institutionalized cooperation between member states. Yet,
as I seek to demonstrate, the shape that agreed-upon measures take
is part of an ongoing process that takes place within a decentralized
governance structure comprising a number of actors. It is precisely the
nature of governance in the policy areas concerned that has played an
important enabling role.

I therefore explore which actors play an important role in trans-

forming policy spheres that are central to state sovereignty and
involve high politics within a decentralized governance structure.
Having identified these actors, I then attempt to discern the frame-
works of thought determining the evolution of European security.
I will, therefore, examine the way in which actors’ ‘knowledge’ of
their environment and their social identities contribute to the crea-
tion of common understandings of security threats and appropriate
responses to them. In other words, I hope to discern the manner
in which their institutional embeddedness has contributed to alter-
ing the politics of ‘internal’ and ‘external’ security within the EU,
as well as the impact of this course on the domestic institutions
of EU member states. This, I believe, will help to shed light on the
relationship of co-determination between institutionalization at
the EU level and changes in member state security apparatuses or,
as I term it, Europeanization, since these actors are active in both
national institutional orders and emergent European level institu-
tional orders.

Finally, this study examines the implications of developments in the

security realm for the EU–US security relationship. Given the previous
dominance of the Atlantic institutional order in Europe, increasingly
formalized cooperation between EU member states and accompany-
ing changes in security policies, associated practices and deployment
of resources also have important implications for transatlantic security
relations. I therefore reflect on the significance of developments for
EU–US relations.

The approach I employ is outlined in greater detail in the follow-

ing chapter. In brief, I conceive of institutionalized cooperation and
Europeanization as co-determining, simultaneously involving national
and European institutional orders. I concentrate on institution-building

12 Securing Europe

at the European level, since this allows one to discern the institutional
order being constructed at the EU level by the activities of practition-
ers active in the decentralized governance structure prevailing in these
areas, as well as to briefly trace the impact of this process on the state
security apparatuses at the national level. The latter is necessarily brief
due to limited space, though changes within member states certainly
merit greater attention from other scholars.

I argue that analyses that assume rationally calculating states fail to

capture important aspects of European integration that would alter the
way in which it is conceived. Cooperation does not necessarily derive
from a convergence of pre-defined national positions, but may also
emerge out of gradual, iterative action. Europeanization in connection
to the ESDP and JHA has been driven less by periodic, intergovern-
mental summits in which states acting as monolithic entities bargain
than by transnational policy practitioners within decentralized policy
arenas. I maintain that the way in which these practitioners conceive
of ‘problems’ and seek common ‘solutions’ to them are vital to creat-
ing an expansive ‘logic’ and to the modification of perceptual schemes
and norms that lead to the institutionalization of cooperation and,
in turn, to the eventual Europeanization of member states’ security
apparatuses. This co-determining aspect of Europeanization was also
important in shaping domestic policy practitioners’ capacity to influ-
ence developments within the EU. Once this dimension of the inte-
gration process is recognized, developments in European security can
no longer convincingly be interpreted as the result of states rationally
pursuing their interests and preferences.

This casts a different light not only on European integration, but

also on European–American security relations. US relations with
European member states are not simply being affected by the estab-
lishment of the new institutional order, as one might assume; they
also help to shape it. Thus, even when the EU appears to be developing
as a significantly different security actor from the US, the two entities
are far more intertwined than is often imagined, suggesting a need to
exercise caution when speaking of the EU as a counterweight to the
US, as some observers are inclined to do.

In order to explore the process by which EU member states are

‘turning towards Europe’ and its relevance for transformation of trans-
atlantic security relations, I first examine the capabilities develop-
ment process taking place in support of the ESDP. This policy area is

Introduction 13

important because it is central to augmenting the EU’s role in the area
of conflict management and, therefore, a key development in relation
to the EU’s growing role as a security actor. It has also been chosen
because it demonstrates the way in which participants of decentralized
policy networks are important agents in the integration process. This
is significant, since progress in this area is helping to transform the
armed forces of EU member states, which are perceived as vital to the
expression of state sovereignty. Given that the ESDP will give the EU a
greater capacity to undertake crisis management operations, it also has
considerable significance for EU–NATO relations.

I then examine increased cooperation in the area of JHA, since the

‘internal’ security arm of the EU is to an even greater extent character-
ized by an array of committees and working groups set up to further
cooperation between police forces, judiciaries, border management
authorities, etc. Practitioners within these networks have been central
to developing a common understanding of the European ‘internal’
security environment and legitimizing EU action in this field. Again,
what is significant about advances in this domain is the way in which
they are modifying expressions of state sovereignty. Developments
within the context of exceptionalism following September 11 are par-
ticularly interesting, as they have given a significant boost to formal
cooperation between member states, including that between the EU
and the US in the area of police and judicial cooperation.

Finally, I look at the establishment of the SP, which constitutes a

major dimension of the EU’s activities in the area of conflict preven-
tion in the Balkans. It has been chosen because of its relevance to the
EU’s ‘external’ security role and because it demonstrates how member
states’ security practitioners, informed by their institutional contexts,
can help to shape important dimensions of the EU’s activities. To this
end, it shows the importance of member states’ domestic institutional
orders on the process of European integration. Since the Pact has signif-
icantly increased the EU’s role in South Eastern Europe (SEE) compared
to the early-to-mid 1990s when it was overshadowed by the US, it also
has relevance for European–American security relations.

A Sociological Institutionalist
Approach to Europeanization

Introduction

Formal cooperation in areas such as defence, intelligence, and judi-
ciaries have tended to be taboo until comparatively recently, due to
their centrality to state sovereignty and their sensitivity. Yet, insti-
tutionalized cooperation occurs in all these areas today. How are we
to understand such developments? As explained earlier, they have
taken place within a governance structure that leaves considerable
room for actors involved in decentralized and sometimes informal
networks to play a role in shaping the form of institutionalized
cooperation at the EU level. How this was possible is a key question
that needs to be addressed. Moreover, how does institutionalization
of cooperation affect member states’ security apparatuses? In other
words, what is the relationship between further institutionaliza-
tion of cooperation and the ‘turn towards Europe’ at the national
level?

In addition, cooperation in the areas of ‘internal’ and ‘external’

security is likely to have implications for the EU–US security rela-
tionship given the US presence in Europe and institutional linkages
maintained with European states through NATO as well as bilaterally
in the area of military security and intelligence within the context
of the Cold War. We therefore need to ask what impact increased
institutionalized cooperation between EU member states has on the
transatlantic security relationship.

Europeanization 15

Review of existing approaches

The process of transformation underway in the field of European
security has been approached in a number of ways. Realists and
neo-realists have sought to explain increased security cooperation in
Europe since the end of the Cold War as a result of power relations.
Christopher Layne, for example, has provided a realist account of
developments in the post-Cold War European security field. He views
the ESDP as a manifestation of Europe’s desire to balance the US.
Commenting on tensions between the US and the EU over the ESDP,
Layne argues that current discord stems from a fundamental clash
over the aspirations of the EU integration project and American ambi-
tions in Europe. According to Layne, this situation portends a return
to the realist ‘norm’ in Europe: ‘One of the few ironclad rules in
international politics is that when one state becomes too powerful in
the international system – as China, Russia, India and Europe believe
the United States became in the unipolar decade following the Soviet
Union’s collapse – others act to create geopolitical counterweights to
it.’

An unparalleled degree of US hegemony within the transatlantic

alliance, in Layne’s view, will sooner or later draw its European allies
into balancing behaviour.

Neo-realism stresses the international distribution of power, largely

defined in material (military) terms, as a causal variable of order
emerging out of the behaviour of self-interested actors. Kenneth
Waltz and John Mearsheimer thus forecast in the early 1990s an
erosion of both the transatlantic alliance and EC/EU institutions in
the absence of the Cold War. Their pessimistic assessment rested on
the assumption that the absence of war in Europe since 1945 had
been a consequence of three factors: the bipolar distribution of mili-
tary power on the continent; the rough military equality between
the two states comprising the two poles of Europe, the US and the
Soviet Union; and the fact that each superpower was armed with a
large nuclear arsenal. In other words, the distribution and character
of military power were the most important factors in shaping past
events. Since both Waltz and Mearsheimer assume their continued
centrality, a multipolar world is believed to portend a conflict-prone
future as a result of the increased number of ‘dyads’ across which
war could break out. Militarily weaker states surrounding a reunited

16 Securing Europe

Germany might, for instance, find it difficult to balance German
aggression.

More recently, Seth Jones has explored the increase in security

cooperation in Europe since the end of the Cold War from a neo-
realist approach. Structural shifts in the international and regional
systems are believed to be important in accounting for increased
European security cooperation. The transition from bipolarity to
unipolarity is also believed to have increased the likelihood of more
intense security cooperation between European states in an attempt
to aggregate power against the US. In addition, European powers
are believed to have been motivated by concerns about the growing
power of Germany and the perceived need to ‘bind’ Germany to the
European integration project.

While the dynamics of Cold War rivalry and the security guarantee

provided by the US certainly encouraged the initial drive for European
integration in the 1950s, transatlantic military integration cannot be
understood solely by reference to the global distribution of military
power. The nature of American power and the minimal degree to
which it relied on coercive, military power within Europe during the
Cold War was fundamental to the success of the Alliance – a point
acknowledged by Jones.

With the revival of the global capitalist

system under American leadership, embodied in the establishment
of the Bretton Woods System, European states took on responsibility
for ensuring that their internal constitutions were favourable to the
management of the revived, American-centred capitalist order. The
network of military and intelligence relations underpinning their
integration with the US in the political-economic arena similarly
imposed largely accepted limits on the sovereignty of European
states in external security and defence policy domains.

As Mark

Webber notes, American leadership in Europe helps to explain, but
does not fully account for, security cooperation in Europe.

Moreover, the demise of the bipolar context does not appear to

have resulted in a return to the neo-realist ‘norm’ in Europe. While
Germany has emerged as a major European power since unification
and is increasingly participating in international military operations,
reflecting a significant evolution in German security policy, other
dimensions of its security policy indicate very different definitions
of the national interest and identity than those prevalent in earlier
times. While Germany has become more and more involved in

Europeanization 17

international military operations, crucial elements of its strategic
culture, such as an attachment to multilateralism, European political
integration, and the constraint of the use of force through national
and international norms, remain fairly constant.

Indeed, it is in

exercising these values that Germany has been able to situate itself
at the forefront of efforts to advance political union in Europe in
recent years.

Realists tend to neglect the continued success and density of insti-

tutions within Europe. The end of the Cold War coincided not with
the erosion, but the deepening and expansion of the EU. European
integration has advanced not only in the economic field, but also in
the area of security. Europe remains the world’s most densely institu-
tionalized region and an example of a region in which understandings
of sovereignty have, to some extent, been altered and supranational
governance extended. Moreover, the EU constitutes not merely a
security community among its own members, but also a powerful
and prosperous core to which peripheral states do not respond with
balancing behaviour, but by aspiring to membership. Enlargement
of the Union has, in fact, become an important vector for change
on the EU’s periphery and underpins the EU’s approach to conflict
prevention, as will be seen later in the chapter on the Stability Pact.
It provides a medium for restructuring economies and state institu-
tions in a way that dilutes national identities and exclusive notions
of sovereignty. In short, enlargement serves as a mechanism with
which both to stabilize and tie neighbouring countries to the EU,
demonstrating that order can be achieved through the transfer of
particular norms reflecting the experience of European integration,
based on political consensus and compromise, an incremental pool-
ing of sovereignty and an attachment to formal rule-making.

While there is an inherent tension built into the Alliance, due to

the disparity in responsibility between European states and the US, it
would be too simplistic to interpret European states’ search for greater
autonomy within the transatlantic relationship as reflecting balanc-
ing behaviour alone. To be sure, EU member states have sought a
more autonomous role in the political-military sphere in the context
of an altered international political situation. Yet it must be remem-
bered that security and defence dimensions of the European inte-
gration project never entirely came off the agenda during the Cold
War years, even after the failure of the EDC. Furthermore, emerging

18 Securing Europe

cooperation in the political-military sphere has been largely realiz-
able because it was initially seen as supporting crisis management
activities, which reflects an understanding of security that departs
from that contained in the realist vision of the world.

Literature specifically dealing with developments in the political-

military sphere has tended to suffer from similar weaknesses. Being
largely descriptive, it has seldom been self-reflective about the assump-
tions it has made about the nature of EU member states and the
formation of their preferences and interests. This burgeoning body
of literature tends to address a number of specific issues deemed
significant for the success of the ESDP and the future of transatlan-
tic relations: the gap in capabilities, responsibilities, and priorities
between European states and the US inevitably feature in one way or
another in these analyses.

As with neo-realist and realist accounts,

EU member states are often depicted as rational, purposive actors,
whose preferences and interests are formed prior to the creation
of institutions. These assumptions also tend to inform studies that
attempt to account for increased cooperation in the political-military
field. Moreover, agreement on substantive issues is often assumed to
precede institutionalized cooperation.

Some accounts that have attempted to recognize the norma-

tive and cultural dimensions of Atlantic and EU institutions have
drawn upon regime theory. Gülner Aybet, for example, argues that
the web of relations that developed during the Cold War as a result
of interlocking institutions within the ‘Western security commu-
nity’ evolved into a regime, within which a sub-regime comprising
European NATO members developed.

Here, principles and norms

are central to institutionalized cooperation within a regime. Interests
emerge within specific normative and historical contexts rather than
simply being assumed to exist a priori. The assumption of rational,
self-interested actors is relaxed. There is, therefore, a sense in which
community exists prior to the emergence of a regime.

Aybet’s approach allows for a broad definition of institutions that

includes informal, extra-legal arrangements, as well as formal institu-
tions. This is important since formalized cooperation in the field of
security has, to a great extent, grown out of informal arrangements.
Nevertheless, he assumes that unitary states are the principal actors
constituting a regime, when formalized cooperation in this area
between EU member states often grew out of regular interaction

Europeanization 19

between sub-state actors in the aforementioned informal arenas.
This highlights the significance of sub-state actors in the process
of institutionalizing cooperation. It is also the case that when it
emerges, institutionalized cooperation does not necessarily imply
a convergence of positions, which Aybet seems to take for granted.
While differences may be reduced as a result of standardization of
practices and deployment of resources, the precise manner in which
structures of meaning are acted on will vary according to the specifi-
cities of each national context. Indeed, regime theory in general is
limited in the extent to which it can capture the processes driving
European security cooperation in that it also assumes a convergence
of expectations, which has not been the case in relation to the field
of security. Nevertheless, institutionalized cooperation advanced in
this area. Moreover, cooperation often grew out of ad hoc, sometimes
informal, networks rather than formal arrangements.

While not directly dealing with developments in the security

field, neo-functionalism has some interesting insights into the proc-
ess by which institutionalized cooperation takes place, particularly
the identification of an expansive ‘logic’. Neo-functionalism con-
ceptualized integration as a result of an institutionalized pattern
of interest politics, played out within international organizations.
It envisaged the gradual reorientation of interest groups seeking to
influence policy outcomes towards the regional level as supranational
decision-making capacities increased.

One of the central pivots of

the neo-functionalist argument rests on the notion of ‘spill-over’,
which is employed to characterize the mechanisms through which
regional integration is thought to occur. In the late 1950s, Ernst Haas
employed the notion of spill-over to refer to the way in which the
creation and deepening of integration in one economic sector creates
pressures for further economic integration within and beyond that
sector, as well as increasing transfer of authority to regional-level
authoritative bodies.

Neo-functionalism has the advantage of being less state-centric

than regime theory, identifying the central actors as the political elites
in participating countries, conceived as the leaders of all relevant
political groups who habitually participate in public decision-making,
whether as policymakers in government, as lobbyists or associations,
the spokesmen of organized labour, higher civil servants or active
politicians. The emphasis on elites in the study of integration derives

20 Securing Europe

from the perceived bureaucratized nature of European organizations,
as well as the perceptible difference in attitudes thought to exist
between leadership levels of significant groups and those of their
mass memberships.

However, their pluralist underpinnings led

them to emphasize political elites connected to competing groups
within member states. This is partly due to the time in which they
were writing. Neo-functionalism was developed during the early
stages of European integration. Political integration has significantly
advanced since then and the governance structure of the EU is now
discernable. It is now evident that mid-level officials engaged in
decentralized policy networks play an important role in the process
of integration.

Neo-functionalism also suggests a gradual increase in supranation-

alism. While supranational institutions, such as the Commission,
certainly attempt to play a role in shaping developments in the area
of security, their role has been fairly limited, due to the fact that
these are overwhelmingly second and third pillar issues, i.e. they are
not subject to Community law and, instead, belong to inter-govern-
mental areas of the EU.

Moreover, the very narrow conception of

governance in Europe that this suggests, i.e. one based on the choice
between the nation state and supranationalism, would create addi-
tional problems for a neo-functionalist argument. It does not provide
the conceptual tools with which to address the connection between
spatial levels.

The more recent multi-level governance approach provides a more

complex conception of the EU governance structure. Within this
approach, authoritative decision making is believed to be dispersed
across several levels as a result of authority being shifted to European
level institutions on the one hand, and to subnational levels of gov-
ernment as a result of regionalization on the other.

The result is a

vision of European integration as a polity-creating process in which
authority and policy-making influence are shared among subna-
tional, national, and supranational levels.

While recognizing that the national level continues to play an

important role within the European integration process, multi-
level governance acknowledges that the state does not monopolize
European governance and that it has now become necessary to
analyse the role of European and subnational level actors in order
to comprehend European integration.

Thus, instead of being

Europeanization 21

superseded, states are conceived as an integral part of a multi-level
polity due to the activities of national leaders, as well as sub-national
and supranational actors. This approach, therefore, recognizes that
the choice is, therefore, not simply between intergovernmentalism
and supranationalism.

It also recognizes that the process of European integration is con-

tingent. Given that it is the result of formal treaties that set out insti-
tutional competences that are constantly being built upon, the EU is
thought of as being created step-by-step.

Liesbet Hooge and Gary

Marks, moreover, note in general that developments in European
integration were partly linked to a shift in the debate to practical
matters.

To this end, the overall importance of framing issues in

‘functional’ or ‘technical’ terms is acknowledged as having been
important in enabling European integration as a polity-creating proc-
ess to advance.

The importance of committees and working groups in the poli-

cymaking process is also acknowledged by Hooge and Marks.

The

stakes involved for the participants of these gatherings are also rec-
ognized as factors shaping their role. However, Hooge and Marks are
primarily concerned with identifying how authority and influence
over the policymaking process is shared among a variety of actors
from different territorial levels rather than identifying how these
actors come to frame issues helps to legitimize and define areas of
operation for the EU.

In this latter respect, Michael E. Smith’s institutional approach to

EU foreign and security policy is highly insightful. He argues that
there is a two-way relationship between institutional development
and shifts in the behaviour of states, which has an important impact
on cooperation. Cooperation is believed to facilitate institution
building, which, in turn, helps foster greater cooperation, which
goes on to shape future efforts at institution building. Causality is
thus conceived as running in both directions. In order to analytically
capture the feedback mechanisms this entails, Smith evaluates the
causal paths separately. Examining these stages individually allows
him to show that cooperation is encouraged by institutionalization,
and that cooperative outcomes also generate debate and reforms
related to institution building and design.

In order to capture both

cooperation and institutional change, Smith engages in an analysis
of dynamic rather than static institutions and one that attempts to

22 Securing Europe

capture cumulative rather than single cooperative outcomes. This
approach also has the advantage of not assuming that cooperative
outcomes are the result of key intergovernmental bargains.

Smith suggests three mechanisms of institutionalization: (1) a func-

tional logic; (2) a logic of normative appropriateness; and (3) a logic of
socialization. The first mechanism identified is based on the assump-
tion that institutional change is likely to be encouraged by the recog-
nition that institutional arrangements may help actors further their
objectives. This ‘logic’ is also present in the neo-functionalist notion
of spill-over, as discussed. The second mechanism is based on the
idea that new norms are likely to be informed by already established
norms. The third and final mechanism identified by Smith refers to
a process by which actors learn to adapt their mindsets and behav-
iour to those dominant within an institution. All three mechanisms,
as well as traditional aspects of power, are believed to be important
internal dynamics behind institutional change. While external
events such as crises or major intergovernmental conferences are
recognized as having an impact on institutional arrangements and
may prompt change, they are not believed to explain the particular
form that institutional change takes. In order to shed light on the
latter, Smith maintains that the focus must be on internal sources of
institutional modification.

Webber’s security governance approach also highlights the role of

internal dynamics, such as elite socialization and identity formation,
in maintaining a security community. Webber’s conceptual frame-
work aims to account for a tendency toward cooperation among
sovereign states that is based on institutionalization, democratic
domestic political systems, shared values, and a common sense of
identity. He does so by drawing on the idea of security community,
composed of states among which there is a common understand-
ing that disputes will be settled by non-violent means. A security
community also possesses a collective identity, premised on shared
democratic values. Yet it is also reproduced by a dynamic of inclu-
sion/exclusion. Security governance is conceived as the practical
manifestation of security community. Governance here relates to the
regulation of cooperative and peaceable relations between states on
the basis of trust and shared norms and objectives. Webber is eager
to stress that governance does not imply a lack of direction; it is
believed to involve structure and process in the form of institutions

Europeanization 23

and policy formulation and outcomes. Interaction between actors
may also involve rivalry, contestation, and power relations.

Webber identifies three key dimensions of security governance:

(1) the idea of region; (2) institutionalization; and (3) compliance.
Institutionalization and compliance are thought to be related to
structure and process, while the idea of region implies that security
communities and governance are likely to be more intense in geo-
graphically specific areas. Institutionalization is conceived of in terms
of the density of institutions and the complexity of formal arrange-
ments in a particular setting. Compliance, resulting from shared
norms, is believed to be connected to the process of institutionaliza-
tion. Socialization of representatives of member states is believed to
take place through their involvement in governance networks, and
organizations are also conceived as capable of norm projection and
socialization. In the case of the EU, this occurs through conditional-
ity in the context of enlargement.

Webber’s approach is important in that it recognizes the impor-

tance of elite socialization in explaining increased security coop-
eration within the EU. Again, in relation to the reproduction of the
security community, Webber acknowledges the importance of shared
values, part of which stem from member states mutual recognition as
democratic states and the status of new members. Webber also notes
that the development of JHA signifies that borders within the EU are
not longer contested and, moreover, that transborder communities
are in the process of developing. Yet this is based on the distinction
made between a secure ‘inside’ and an unsafe ‘outside’ that helps to
reproduce the security community comprised of EU member states,
and, at the same time, it implies the construction of a harder external
border.

As we will see, this is something that is certainly occurring

as a result of the expansion of cooperation in the area of JHA.

Regarding the relationship between institutionalized cooperation

in the field of internal security and transatlantic security relations,
a number of neo-Marxist scholars’ approaches are useful.

With

respect to new domestic practices and legal measures adopted in the
name of the ‘War on Terrorism’ in Europe, as well as in Canada, Leo
Panitch has recently argued that ‘The United States is now requiring
all states to restructure their coercive apparatus to fit America’s stra-
tegic concerns.’

It was certainly the case that Washington exerted

considerable pressure on the EU following the September 11 attacks.

24 Securing Europe

In this respect, it highlights the importance of the US in European
security developments. Nevertheless, new measures introduced by
the EU after these incidents took place had been on the agenda for
some time.

In Europe, a growing number of threats to security have been

identified as transnational and often criminal in origin. As noted,
the creation of the Single Market, particularly against the backdrop
of the end of the Cold War and instability on Europe’s periphery,
has intensified this trend. The externalization and criminalization
of perceived threats to European ‘internal security’ has provided a
common perceptual framework upon which to reorganize structures
and redefine the roles of the state’s coercive apparatus, resulting,
inter alia, in the employment of controversial, pro-active policing
and border controls. It has also provided a common framework for
increased cooperation between European law enforcement agencies.
The reorganization of member states’ security practices that may be
linked to their changing character has a specifically European dimen-
sion. If the state’s ‘repressive functions’ are becoming dominant in
Europe, this development is occurring as part of a complex process
of renegotiating the terms of statehood and political community
within the context of regional integration. Hence, September 11 and
the ‘War on Terrorism’ may have elaborated and amplified tenden-
cies that were already taking shape in Europe within the context of
the Single Market and on a less formalized level before that. This
highlights the importance of gaining a better understanding of the
transformative process occurring in Europe.

With regard to integration in the area of ‘external’ security, Peter

Gowan’s work on the socio-economic structural foundations of
transatlantic tensions in the politico-military field is indicative of
the issues at stake for the EU and the US in this area.

US ambi-

guity about the EU’s greater engagement in the security sphere,
according to Gowan, is linked to the threat it poses to US grand
strategy in Europe. Gowan argues that the defining feature of world
politics since the end of the East–West confrontation has been the
‘American state’s campaign to rebuild and expand the protectorate
systems that formed the basis of American global political domi-
nance during the Cold War.’

The ‘American protectorate system’,

as described by Gowan, comprises the security alliances estab-
lished between the US and other states, in which the US occupied

Europeanization 25

a dominant and determining position by virtue of the centrality
attributed to its coercive apparatuses by the complementary tasks
of reviving global capitalism and guarding against a perceived
Soviet menace.

According to Gowan, the collapse of the Soviet

bloc made the maintenance of the protectorate system a paramount
strategic goal for the US policy establishment.

In the early 1990s,

the major challenge facing the renewal of the US-dominated pro-
tectorate system lay in Europe. The collapse of the Soviet Union
meant that US dominance would be perceived as less legitimate by
West Europeans, who might seek to create a West European caucus
within the Alliance.

Gowan’s argument bears similarities to regime theory insofar as it

identifies the US as having played an essential role in reviving and
maintaining an open world economic system. Yet Gowan’s account
recognizes that the US-dominated Euro-Atlantic military alliance sys-
tem was fundamental to the hegemon’s capacity to foster favourable
conditions for the expansion of US capital. In this sense, he points
to an important dimension of US global power. Institutionalized
political alignment was underpinned internally, as well as externally,
by the moral imperative of fighting Communism. This ‘imperative’
was crucial to the reviving of global capitalism following the Second
World War, this time under US dominance. In Gowan’s favour, he
also acknowledges that this alignment was never absolute, because
of the specificities of European domestic orders.

Taking into account the role of the alliance system in undergirding

the linkage between social systems and US capitalism is also evoca-
tive of the source of US ambiguity towards greater European engage-
ment in the ‘military security’ domain. Greater military autonomy
for European states does imply greater decision-making authority
within the Euro-Atlantic security arena, as mentioned at the outset.
Since Washington was more accommodating to greater European
autonomy as long as it took place within a US-dominated, NATO
framework, it seems reasonable to conclude that what is at stake for
the US is its continued political dominance. Gowan’s contention that
the impact of the end of the Cold War has also been crucial in creat-
ing an opening in which some European states have been able to reo-
rient their foreign and security policies is also correct. These factors
notwithstanding, the pursuit of greater political autonomy cannot
be fully comprehended without reference to cognitive-normative

26 Securing Europe

aspects of institutionalized cooperation. ‘Europe’ is increasingly
framing member states’ response and adaptation to the changed
international political, as well as economic environment, result-
ing in institutional ties between EU member states being devel-
oped in the political-military domain, and moves to consolidate a
European defence industry and further joint procurement. Rather
than simply providing an opportunity for unitary states to pursue
their preferences, the EU governance structure has, as mentioned
earlier, enabled fragments of the state to affect the evolution of the
integration project.

The absence of a strategic culture conducive to acceptance of US

leadership within the Alliance as an expression of the general interest
is only part of the story. European drive to attain greater autonomy
within the transatlantic alliance and related institutional develop-
ments are partly stimulated by geo-strategic calculations. However,
one has to be careful not to overestimate the importance of this
factor. The process of European integration is itself partly reshap-
ing the ‘internal’ and ‘external’ orientations of Europe states.

It is

this transformative process that needs to be better understood and
incorporated into analyses of European integration in the security
field. There is a very specific cognitive dimension driving deeper
integration in this area, as well as in others. Much of the momen-
tum behind cooperation in the political-military sphere is connected
to the ongoing project of ever-closer political union. The ESDP, for
example, is intimately linked to developing crisis management capa-
bilities. Some states’ very notion of statehood, such as Germany’s, are
deeply connected to regional integration. This dimension of change
has, of course, been intensified as globalization has made exclusive
notions of national sovereignty problematic. Acting collectively with
other European states has in some cases been seen as a response to
perceptions of declining state capacities. Also important here are the
dominant structures of thought and the manner in which they are
acted on.

Moreover, the overwhelming focus on US efforts to retain its

leadership position within the alliance system, leads to a failure to
capture important aspects of the international political dimension
of US global power that are perceptible when the predicament of
European states is considered in more detail. In addition to the struc-
turing role attributed to the coercive apparatuses of the American

Europeanization 27

state, linkages between US military and intelligence agencies also
played an important ‘socialising’ role within the alliance system.
‘Institutionalised political alignment’ came not only from depend-
ence on the US coercive apparatuses in relation to the creation of
permissive conditions for the expansion of European capitalisms, but
also as a result of working together, to the same standards, and, in
some instances, working on joint projects. Of course, the perceptual
framework underpinning these relations is important, but it is not
irreplaceable. If the collapse of the strategic culture that facilitated
Atlantic unity during the Cold War has had serious consequences for
the US capacity to lead, the ‘War on Terrorism’ seems to be provid-
ing a new foundation for ties, though this time most intensively in
the field of internal security. This development appears to have been
largely overlooked by Gowan, due to his focus is on the geostrategic
motivations of states.

Working from within a Gramscian-inspired framework of analysis,

Alan Cafruny also characterizes European–American security rela-
tions as a ‘hub and spoke’ relationship. According to Cafruny, relative
geopolitical weakness reduced West Europeans’ capacity to challenge
US hegemony or to retain primacy in their former colonies, with the
exception of sub-Saharan Africa. Despite its comparative geopolitical
weakness, Western Europe nevertheless possessed a strong position
in the domain of the international trading arena, giving rise to its
self-definition as a civilian power. This gap in military power has
been further widened, due to the mutually reinforcing structures of
economic and political domination that the US enjoys.

Cafruny insists that the ESDP is evolving under the umbrella of

the US and serves to institutionalize Europe’s subordinate position
in the transatlantic relationship. Such a development is perceived
as benign and consistent with the US desire to limit the costs of
geopolitical dominance while ensuring that the European ‘pillar’ is
fixed within the framework of Atlanticism. Three factors point in
this direction: first, the continuation of European rivalry and con-
flicts of interest; second, the technological and economic realities
of military procurement; and third, the success of the US in extend-
ing deep into Central and Eastern Europe. In the case of the War in
Iraq, the improvised Franco-German initiative did not constitute
a pan-European ethico-political alternative to US-led Atlanticism.
In Cafruny’s view, European states lack the commitment required

28 Securing Europe

to realize their ambitions in the political-military domain and, by
default, acquiesce to American supremacy.

Cafruny is correct to point out that the EU’s failure to respond

adequately to the wars in the former Yugoslavia did cause Europeans
to realize that they lacked the military capacities with which to
respond to crisis in their own backyard, and that their initial efforts
to improve this situation within the framework of NATO were tes-
timony to this. Nevertheless, the framework, as mentioned earlier,
shifted to the EU. Moreover, while the ESDP is dependent on US
military assets and Europe has been reluctant to increase defence
expenditure, there is a growing momentum behind consolidation of
Europe’s defence industrial base. What Cafruny identifies as a lack of
commitment is better conceived of as divergences in member states’
institutional orders and political identities vis-à-vis European inte-
gration and the Atlantic alliance. The ESDP is not underpinned by a
pan-European ethico-political alternative to US-led Atlanticism. The
extent to which it represents a greater degree of political autonomy
for Europeans should, nevertheless, not be underestimated. Moreover,
while a geographic division of labour is likely to emerge, with Europe
focusing on SEE, the Caucusus and Africa, and the US focusing more
on Central Asia and the Far East, the division of labour in terms of
tasks is not necessarily as clear cut as Cafruny suggests. The 2003
EU operation in the Democratic Republic of Congo was hardly a
peacekeeping mission, but involved, inter alia, securing the town of
Bunia in the Congolese province of Ituri.

The ESDP will also allow

the US to reduce the cost of geopolitical dominance. However, if this
reorganization reflected only US national interests, surely the ESDP
would be much less controversial in Washington.

To sum up, then, neo-realism, realism, and regime theory tend

to consider politics as the outcome of interactions between rational
agents, understood to be unitary states. However, the institutionali-
zation of cooperation between EU member states was not based on
the convergence of pre-defined state interests; instead, it has tended
to emerge out of iterative interaction, often guided by transnational
policy elites. A concept of cooperation that can better capture the
relationship between interest formation and the European integra-
tion process is required. In many respects, neo-functionalism was
perceptive in that it identified political elites as the central actors
driving integration and the integration process as a two-way process.

Europeanization 29

What it failed to recognize, however, was that interests are socially
defined and that actors are institutionally-embedded. This is rem-
edied by the more recent approaches of European cooperation that
emphasize elite socialization and dimensions of identity formation.

With regard to the impact of institutionalized European cooperation

on the transatlantic security relationship, a number of neo-Marxist
scholars have provided some useful insights. Nevertheless, they tend
to account for state activities in the external field in terms of balancing
behaviour, i.e. vis-à-vis the US. The cognitive-normative dimension
is underemphasized and agency is assumed to belong to states and
to be constructed pre-socially. The emphasis on the politico-military
sphere has also obscured the sense in which the ‘War on Terrorism’
is providing a new perceptual framework and moral imperatives with
which to underwrite the post-Cold War configuration of political and
economic forces. Understanding the processes by which EU member
states respond and adapt to a changed global environment through
integration involves exploring reorientation towards ‘Europe’ as a
process of transformation in which institutions play a critical role.
New institutionalist literature provides useful conceptual tools with
which to do this and it is to this that I now turn.

A sociological institutionalist approach

New institutionalist literature offers some useful concepts with
which to explore the reorientation of EU member states towards
‘Europe’ as a process of transformation. Before setting out my own
analytic framework, it is worth recapping the key tenets of new insti-
tutionalism.

New institutionalists are essentially concerned with the role that

institutions play in the creation of a social and political order.
Several variants of new institutionalism can be identified. I follow
Peter Hall and Rosemary Taylor’s specification of three institution-
alisms – rationalist, historical and sociological.

Rational choice

institutionalists tend to characterize institutions as formal, legalistic
entities and sets of decision-making rules. The role attributed to
institutions by rational choice institutionalists is linked to a particu-
lar understanding of preference formation. Rational choice theorists
deal with preferences at the level of assumptions. Actors are assumed
to have fixed preferences and to behave instrumentally, as well as

30 Securing Europe

strategically, so as to maximize the attainment of their goals. This is
where institutions enter the analysis. The strategic calculus of actors
is believed to be deeply affected by actors’ expectations about the
likely behaviour of others. Institutions are believed to affect out-
comes by structuring such interaction – either by affecting the range
and sequence of possible outcomes, leading actors towards particular
calculations, or by providing information that reduces uncertainty
about the behaviour of others, enabling potentially better outcomes.
Rational choice institutionalists explain the existence of institutions
by reference to the value that those affected by them attribute them,
which is frequently understood as the gains from cooperation accru-
ing from the reduction of the risks and penalties.

This type of new institutionalism resembles regime theory. As in

regime theory, actors are assumed to have fixed preferences based on
rational calculations of their own interests. These calculations are
similarly thought to be determined by actors’ expectations about the
behaviour of others. Institutions are perceived to be intervening vari-
ables, located between causal forces, i.e. the pursuit of self-interest
and outcomes. Rational choice institutionalism is, however, poten-
tially less state-centric than regime theory, which was formulated to
answer a specific question, namely how institutionalized coopera-
tion in an open, world economy governed by sovereign states was
possible.

In mainstream Political Science the second variant of new insti-

tutionalism, historical institutionalism, was employed by scholars
who sought to recast the study of the state.

Like rational choice

institutionalists, historical institutionalists assume that institutions
provide the context in which political actors define their strategies
and pursue their interests. Yet in historical institutionalist analyses
institutions are attributed a much greater role in shaping politics
than suggested in the narrow, rational choice model.

Peter Hall

and John Ikenberry define institutions as both formal and informal
procedures, routines, norms, and conventions embedded in the
organizational structure of the polity or political economy. These
institutions are believed to distribute power unevenly across social
groups. They are seen as relatively persistent features of the historical
landscape and one of the central factors pushing historical develop-
ment along particular paths. Some analysts emphasize the role that
policy legacies play in influencing choices, while others choose to

Europeanization 31

emphasize the way in which past policies condition subsequent poli-
cies by encouraging societal forces to organize in particular ways, to
adopt particular identities, or to develop interests in policies that
are costly to alter. As a result of ‘rigidity’, historical institutionalists
stress the unintended consequences and ‘inefficiencies’ generated by
existing institutions, which contrasts with the rational choice view
of institutions as more efficient.

Historical institutionalists are also inclined to conceptualize the

relationship between institutions and individual behaviour in fairly
broad terms, particularly those historical institutionalists who employ
a ‘cultural approach’ and emphasize the extent to which preferences
are socially defined. In this instance, institutions are believed to have
the capacity to influence the preferences and goals of actors and,
in doing so, structure outcomes by providing moral or perceptual
templates that equip individuals with filters for the interpretation
of both the situation and oneself, from which a course of action is
constructed. In historical institutionalist terms, actors are not fully
aware of the full implications of participating in institutional venues.
Actors do not, therefore, act upon pre-defined interests.

While historical institutionalism is better able to capture the role

that institutions play in structuring behaviour, it tends to exhibit a
structural bias. Martijn Konings makes this point specifically in rela-
tion to ‘the bringing the state back in’ school. His argument, however,
helps to highlight similar weaknesses found in later elaborations and
applications of historical institutionalism. Structural bias, according
to Konings, stems from a failure to take into account the element of
co-constitution contained in the relationship between human agency
and institutional structures. Once this co-constitutive dimension of
the structure-agency relationship is taken note of, he argues, the
structuring quality of institutions cannot be properly apprehended
without incorporating into the analysis agents’ capacity for interpre-
tation.

In other words, structures are properly understood as both

the medium and the outcome of the (re)production of practices.

This dimension of the relationship between human behaviour and
institutions is entirely obscured by historical institutionalists (as
well as rational choice institutionalists) employing a rational choice,
‘calculus approach’, since they assume exogenous preference forma-
tion. While attributing a greater constitutive, structuring role to
institutions, those historical institutionalists who employ a ‘cultural

32 Securing Europe

approach’ ultimately fail to fully grasp the mutually constitutive
aspect of the relationship between individual behaviour and institu-
tions, which tends to result in institutional determinism.

Sociological institutionalism, which emerged as a result of grow-

ing interest among sociologists in the capacity of cultural and
organizational practices to shape the preferences, interests and
identities of actors in the social world, is better equipped to capture
this co-constitutive aspect of the agent–structure relationship than
other strands of new institutionalism.

Like historical institutional-

ists, sociological institutionalists define institutions in broad terms.
However, they include not only formal rules, procedures or norms,
but also cognitive and moral templates that frame the construction
of meaning informing human behaviour. Actors’ preferences, inter-
ests, and identities are not assumed to be exogenous to institutions.
Instead, they are thought to emanate from interaction shaped by
institutions. For some sociological institutionalists, institutions are
believed to affect individual action as a result of the socialization of
individuals. Others have closer affinities with social constructivists
working in the field of IR and tend to emphasize the way in which
institutions provide the very terms through which individuals make
sense of the social world.

Accordingly, the influence of institutions on behaviour implies

more than simply specifying what one should do in a given situa-
tion; it also defines the limits of the possible. This does not, how-
ever, mean that individuals are not goal-oriented or rational. What
sociological institutionalists stress is that what individuals view as
rational is itself socially constructed. Hence, rational, strategic action
cannot be understood outside the institutional context in which that
action takes place. Similarly, constraints or pressures experienced
by individual actors are understood as the result of engagement in
socially meaningful acts. When actors engage in such acts, i.e. when
they act according to social convention, individuals simultaneously
constitute themselves as social actors and reproduce the conventions
informing their behaviour.

Institutions in this view are, therefore,

understood as established social practices that govern interaction,
rather than simply formal entities, such as organizations. They are
both the means and the outcome of action.

Perceiving individual actors and structures as co-constitutive

of one another has the advantage of making process the object of

Europeanization 33

analysis, rather than a study of comparative statics. Moreover, by
drawing attention to the ‘unconscious motivation’ of actors, rather
than merely assuming that they only act upon preconceived, rational
intentions, sociological institutionalists are better able to capture the
structuring properties of institutions. The approach allows for a clus-
ter of agents specific to certain situations to have an impact on the
constitution of social and political structures. This means that the
unitary actor assumption with regards to states is overcome.

This is

important from the viewpoint of this study, since developments in
European security occur not simply as a result of intergovernmen-
tal summits, but also as a result of day-to-day, regular interactions
between transnational security practitioners.

Moreover, understanding individual actions and institutions as co-

constitutive suggests that the outcome of individuals’ actions may
not be fully comprehended by the agents themselves. It is the uncon-
scious effects of engaging in socially meaningful behaviour that gives
institutions their structuring quality. Recognizing the co-constitutive
relationship between actors and institutions is, however, not enough
to break with a structuralist mode of explanation. Enough theoreti-
cal room must also be left to allow actors to be innovative and thus
potentially subversive of prevailing institutional norms. Sociological
institutionalists contend that institutional practices are modi-
fied, not because of means–end efficiency of an organization or its
participants, but as a result of when an individual ‘reworks’ such
perceptual and moral templates. This implies that structures, while
constitutive of the political life of the individuals that reproduce
them, are, nonetheless, subject to change if and when the prac-
tices of actors change. The question then becomes one of how the
schemes with which actors order social practices are modified. Some
sociological institutionalists suggest that individuals adopt new
institutional practices because they are considered appropriate in a
broader cultural environment. Here, the stress is placed on the effects
of collective interpretation and social legitimacy. However, since
institutional formation has power effects that create social or politi-
cal ‘realities’, reform of those institutions necessarily entails power
struggles among actors, which an emphasis on processes of diffusion
risks obscuring.

In such instances, experienced as pressure, actors

may take purposive action (based on established schemes), as they
respond to a changing context.

34 Securing Europe

This question appears to be underexplored by sociological institu-

tionalists. Roger Friedland and Robert Alford argue that the content
of an institutional order shapes the mechanisms by which organiza-
tions are able to conform or deviate from established patterns that
need to be explained. These institutional orders, and specific rela-
tions between them, delimit the types of organizational fields, and,
thereby, shape the rules by which rationality is perceived and prefer-
ences are formed. Particular institutional settings may render some
changes more rational than others. Friedland and Alford also remind
us that it is not only change, but also the stability of interests that
must be explained. To this end, institutional sources must be identi-
fied for the stability and routinization of interests as much as their
transformation.

A focus on social practices can also help us deal with the relation-

ship between different spheres of social life, as well as the relationship
between different spatial levels, i.e. the national, regional, and global,
if a set of practices can be understood as informing the practical
knowledge of actors in different fields, and thereby form the basis of a
set of socially- and historically-informed and shared dispositions that
govern political and economic life in various contexts. It suggests
that an increased focus on the framing of issues, the construction
of identities, and of interests in different spheres and analytic levels
may be helpful.

In order to assist in thinking further about these

relationships, it is useful to look at Anthony Giddens’ treatment of
the subject.

His structuration theory is based on the premise that the study of

human activity in the social sciences is neither the experience of the
individual actor, nor the existence of the societal totality, but the
duality of social practices ordered across space and time. The dual-
ism between subject and object has, according to Giddens, to be re-
conceptualized in such a way as to capture them as a duality, rather
than as phenomena constituted independently from one another.
According to this concept, the structural properties of social systems
are both the medium and outcome of the practices they repeatedly
organize. That is, repeated social practices constitute both the subject
and the object. Giddens conceives of this mutual constitution in the
following way: the recursive ordering of social practices implies that
actors exhibit some degree of reflexivity, i.e. they monitor their own
behaviour, as well as that of others. This monitoring depends upon

Europeanization 35

rationalization, understood by Giddens as ‘a process rather than a
state and as inherently involved in the competence of agents. …
[A]ctors – also routinely and for the most part without a fuss –
maintain a continuing ‘theoretical understanding’ of the grounds
of their activity.’

This reflexivity or ‘knowledgeability’ of agents,

i.e. what they know about what they are doing and their reasons
for doing it, is partly driven by a tacit knowledge, or in Giddens’
terminology ‘practical consciousness’. This tacit form of knowledge
largely informs things that are done habitually, on a day-to-day basis,
or ‘routinization’. The routinization of activities is believed to con-
stitute the material basis of the structured properties of social activ-
ity, which – via the duality of structure – are constantly recreated
through actors’ habitual behaviour. Thus, while structures are not
brought into being by social actors, they are continually recreated by
them via the very means whereby they express themselves as actors.
In and through their activities, agents reproduce the conditions that
make these activities possible.

‘Structure’, according to Giddens, can therefore be understood as

rules and resources recursively implicated in social reproduction.
Rules, for Giddens, are not understood as formalized prescriptions,
but ‘methodical procedures’ of social interaction. They comprise both
codes of signification and normative elements, i.e. the constitution
of meaning and the sanctioning of modes of behaviour. These two
aspects of rules can only be separated for the purpose of analysis. In
everyday life, the two are intertwined. The notion of accountability,
for instance, expresses an intersection between interpretive schemes
and norms. To be accountable for one’s actions implies a capacity
to explain the reasons for them, as well as to supply the normative
groundings justifying them.

Resources too are believed to have two aspects: authoritative

resources, which derive from the coordination of the activity of
human agents, and allocative resources, which stem from the
control of aspects of the material world. Structures of domination
depend upon the successful mobilization of these two forms of
resource, whereby ‘power “flows smoothly” in processes of social
reproduction.’

Authoritative resources are thus just as important

as allocative resources. They cannot be developed without support-
ing authoritative resources.

Structure thus refers to the structuring

properties that make it possible for discernibly similar social practices

36 Securing Europe

to exist across varying instances of time and space, and that lend
them ‘systemic’ form. The most deeply embedded structural proper-
ties or institutionalized features of social systems, implicated in the
reproduction of societal totalities, Giddens refers to as ‘structural
principles’. Institutions in structuration theory are those practices
that have the greatest time-space extension within such totalities. By
definition, they are the more enduring features of social life. Social
identities and the practices associated with them are conceived of as
‘markers’ in the virtual time-space of structure. They are associated
with normative rights, obligations and sanctions that, within specific
collectivities, form roles.

According to Giddens, the application of structuration theory

would, first, imply analysing how actors draw upon structural proper-
ties when engaging in purposive action. Actors would be assumed to
know tacitly a great deal about the context in which they act, as well
as to be able to justify their actions. Primacy would thus be given to
the discursive and practical consciousness of actors. A hermeneutic
approach would be required in order to elucidate the frames of
meaning or schemes of perception informing actors’ reasoning and
the formation of interests. Studying practical consciousness implies
investigating what agents already know, but do not necessarily
express discursively. Their knowledge is, however, ‘bounded knowl-
edge’, because they cannot be aware of the entirety of the conditions
informing their behaviour, and because unintended consequences
may result from their essentially purposive behaviour. In order to
make out the boundedness of their knowledge, it would be necessary
to attempt to identify the main features of the institutional compo-
nents of the social systems in which they operate.

When it comes to the transformation of social relations, Giddens

suggests that we conceive it as the result of routinized intersections of
practices. Since repeated social practices are both the medium and the
outcome of structuring properties, which shape social relations, their
intersection also implies an intersection of structuring properties. At
this intersection, modifications take place. What would this imply for
the transformation of institutions? As a result of the duality of struc-
ture, this would imply that the institutional orders along with social
practices undergo transformation at points of intersection. Since
change is conceived as the result of a conjuncture of circumstances,
institutional change in various domestic settings may be expected to

Europeanization 37

differ. Within the context of globalization, for example, pressures for
increased ‘flexibility’, the specific institutions that have come under
attack, as well as their significance for the labour movement, differ
from country to country.

Here, as Giddens notes, the notion of

human reflexivity is important. Presumably actors attempt to order
social practices based on their knowledge of how ‘to go about’ things
in their immediate context, leading to diverging ‘responses’ to the
influence of the same factors. Social identities and practices associ-
ated with institutions similarly would be expected to undergo some
degree of transformation.

To summarize, then, while each type of institutionalism conceives of

the nature of institutions and their relationship to actor behaviour in
its own way, the basic premise informing all new institutionalist anal-
yses is that institutions affect actions and outcomes, as well as contain
biases that can have power effects, i.e. distributional consequences. In
this sense, they take issue with the idea that institutions simply mir-
ror social activity or are the outcome of rational competition among
disaggregated units.

Institutions should be thought of more in terms

of their cognitive-normative functions, rather than in terms of their
causal capacities. I argue that sociological institutionalism provides
useful tools with which to capture the process of Europeanization. In
particular, it offers the conceptual tools with which to conceive of the
relationship between agency and structure as co-constitutive. This, it
was argued, shifts the focus to process and allows the analyst to avoid
the pitfall of assuming a rational, unitary state. It was also suggested
that it provides a means of conceptually linking different spatial lev-
els and spheres, since social practices, which are identifiable, are the
interface between them. The relationship between agents and institu-
tions has to be capable of allowing for processes of social learning, i.e.
adjustments in perceptual and normative schemes, as well as strategic
action. However, it is the content of an institutional order that shapes
its capacity to deviate from established patterns. Thus, it is the identi-
fication of this content that needs to be discerned where variations in
national institutional orders bear upon a particular problem.

Europeanization

Given the co-constitutive dimension of the relationship between
institutions and individual behaviour set out above, it is clear that

38 Securing Europe

rational choice institutionalism would provide an inadequate con-
ceptual framework with which to examine the relationship between
the institutionalization of the EU and domestic institutions. Rational
choice institutionalists would most likely seek to model the causal-
ity of the domestic ‘response’ by looking at a series of snapshots
of strategic interactions between member state governments, thus
favouring an intergovernmental approach. They would tend to
view a national government’s behaviour in negotiations as designed
to optimize its bargaining position vis-à-vis other member states.
While it is undeniably the case that strategic calculations of this sort
occur, the previous discussion points out that this kind of purposive
behaviour has to be understood in particular institutional contexts,
making it essential to grant a more meaningful shaping role to insti-
tutions than rational choice institutionalism would allow.

Historical institutionalists, by contrast, would be inclined to take

a longer view and to try to capture less quantifiable factors, such as
informal rules and norms, as they stabilize over time, inducing the
reproduction of certain patterns of behaviour. Consequently, they
would tend to view the national ‘response’ to the European integra-
tion process in terms of incrementalism, with institutional change
occurring largely in line with existing institutional formats, rather
than as a result of rational calculations designed to maximize the
government’s bargaining position within EU arenas. Simon Bulmer
and Martin Burch, for example, have employed a historical institu-
tionalist framework to examine the response of German and British
national governmental systems to EU membership. They claim that
in both German and British responses to ‘Europe’, historical and
cultural contexts matter. They contend that the different national
governmental systems have managed the European dimension of
policy in ways appropriate to their national patterns of government.
They also found culture and belief systems of post-war elites in the
two states to be embedded in these institutional arrangements.
Historical institutionalists’ emphasis on ‘path dependency’ also pro-
vides them with an explanation for the de-nationalization of some of
the state’s traditional functions. They argue that the very creation of
Community institutions, with identifiable competencies and powers,
set in motion a path of development that could not necessarily have
been predicted at the outset. On the one hand, institutional bodies,
such as the European Court of Justice (ECJ), developed their own

Europeanization 39

agendas. The ECJ, for example, became a vigorous supporter of the
expansion of European-level policy competence and the supremacy
of Community law over that of member states. On the other hand,
informal patterns of interaction and norms of behaviour developed
that tended to persist, and subsequent actors have had to operate
within these self-reproducing scripts.

Sociological institutionalists would share some of these concerns,

but attach a greater importance to cognitive and cultural mecha-
nisms. Transformations of national level institutions would also be
viewed over the long term. Yet, the character of that agency would
tend to be seen as reflective of the state’s collective identity as
defined by its relationship to the integration process. Sociological
institutionalist approaches are evident in various constructivist
contributions of EU studies.

Colin Hay and Ben Rosamond, for

example, have attempted to map the range of discourses of globaliza-
tion and European integration in contemporary Europe and to chart
the strategic deployment of such discourses in various EU member
countries and their linkage to European integration.

Sociological

institutionalist concerns are also evident in approaches that draw on
Giddens’ structuration theory, such as that of Thomas Christiansen
and Knud Erik Jorgensen’s structurationist perspective on EU treaty
reform. They emphasize the way in which political actors and social
structures are co-constitutive, and thereby put the stress on proc-
ess. As a result, the crucial object of analysis is not member states’
interests, but the process by which these are constructed, allowing
them to examine treaty reform as a continuous, open-ended process
structured by institutions that are established and reproduced in the
course of reform by a variety of actors.

In this perspective, agency,

including that of national governments, continues to make a differ-
ence. However, in contrast to traditional studies of treaty change,
their perspective recognizes that governmental agency should be
viewed in the context of institutional environment – the trajectory
of past decisions, the multilateral generation of reform agendas, the
institutionalized patterns of negotiation and decision-making, the
constitutionalization of the EU order – which severely compromises
the ability of national governments to negotiate on the basis of their
‘national interests.’

This would clearly be well-suited to the ‘inter-

nal’ and ‘external’ security fields of the EU, due to the governance
structures prevailing in the second and third pillars.

40 Securing Europe

In order to characterize the integration process specialist lit-

erature on European integration often employs the concept of
‘Europeanization’ in order to draw attention to a transformative pro-
cess. Europeanization is distinguished from convergence in that the
latter is a consequence of Europeanization and Europeanization can
sometimes lead to divergence. It is also deemed to be distinct from
harmonization, since it does not necessarily reduce regulatory diver-
sity.

As Robert Ladrech points out, no consensus exists among those

scholars that employ the concept of Europeanization as to whether
it denotes a process of domestic change resulting from the impact
of European integration or the emergence of EU institutions them-
selves. Europeanization has, for example, been employed to refer
to the de jure transfer of sovereignty to the EU level, the sharing of
power between national governments and the EU, the emergence and
development at the European level of a distinct political system, and
the extension of the boundaries of the relevant political space beyond
member states. Ladrech, who was the first person to coin the term
Europeanization, defined it as ‘an incremental process re-orienting
the direction and shape of politics to the degree that EC political
and economic dynamics become part of the organizational logic of
national politics and policy making.’ ‘Organizational logic’ refers to
the ‘adaptive processes of organizations to a changed or changing
environment.’

The role of adaptation, learning, and policy change

are thus emphasized. Ladrech clearly conceives of Europeanization
as a top-down process of change. His definition, as Claudio Radaelli
notes, is broad enough to accommodate processes involving policy
networks, but risks obfuscating the role of the cognitive-normative
dimension of change. This is important to avoid, since it is consid-
ered essential from the viewpoint of this study to understand recent
developments in the European security field.

Drawing upon Ladrech’s definition, Radaelli puts forward another

definition of Europeanization:

Processes of (a) construction, (b) diffusion, and (c) institutionali-
zation of formal and informal rules, procedures, policy paradigms,
styles, ‘ways of doing things’, and shared beliefs and norms which
are first defined and consolidated in the making of EU public
policy and politics and then incorporated in the logic of domestic
discourse, identities, political structures, and public policies.

Europeanization 41

This definition was broad enough to allow for the inclusion of both
structures of thought and organizations in analyses. Moreover, it
does not mention EU laws or decisions of a similar level, referring
instead to ‘EU public policy’ in order to include modes of govern-
ance that are not aimed at law making, such as the Open Method of
Coordination (OMC), in which agreement often takes the form of
declarations or rules of conduct that are not legally enforceable. It
stresses the making of policy, without assuming there is a coherent
layer of EU decisions that triggers Europeanization at the national
level. As a result, it is capable of encompassing a vertical, top-down
mode of Europeanization, as well as horizontal one, in which the
cognitive-normative dimension plays a vital role.

It is helpful to distinguish between these two types of Europeanization

by situating them within the context of different forms of EU govern-
ance. In a recent article, Bulmer and Radaelli do just that. They link the
vertical, top-down mode of Europeanization with ‘governance by hier-
archy’, which refers to those circumstances where the supranational
institutions of the EU have a considerable amount of power delegated
to them to ensure that an agreed policy template is implemented by
member states. There is both a hierarchical and a coercive dimension
to this form of Europeanization. Here, changes in institutional prac-
tices resulting from purposive, ‘rational’ calculation can be envisaged.
The horizontal mode of Europeanization involves a rather different
form of adjustment to ‘Europe’ that is not brought about by pressure
to adjust national policy to conform to that of the EU. This type of
Europeanization obtains in situations where inter-governmental coop-
eration dominates and transnational policy practitioners are the major
actors, and where supranational institutions have a limited capacity to
promote integration. Such situations exist where the policy process is
not subject to European law; where decisions are subject to unanimity
among governments; where the EU is simply an arena for the exchange
of ideas; or in cases of ‘facilitated coordination’. As Bulmer and Radaelli
note, this kind of Europeanization has occurred in association with the
CFSP, where a strong ‘impulse’ to coordinate has developed and shared
policy principles have, at least to some extent, emerged as a result of
‘horizontal’ exchanges between representatives of member govern-
ments.

Here, change is thought to occur as a result of social learning.

Kerry Howell, along with Bulmer and Radaelli, identifies a third

type of Europeanization that takes place during the negotiating

42 Securing Europe

stage of EU policy construction. This dynamic is thought to involve
the projection of national-governmental preferences. The extent to
which member governments are successful in projecting their con-
cerns at the stage of policy formation or because of early membership
may later have an impact on the extent of change at the national
level in relation to top-down mode of Europeanization. When this
dynamic is incorporated into the analysis, Europeanization becomes
an interactive process, which involves bottom-up, as well as top-
down processes. If the domestic level initiates change in the EU and
affects European integration, the relationship between European
integration and Europeanization is best thought of as interactive.
This, in turn, suggests a repetitive and co-constitutive relationship
between the EU and the institutional order of member government
institutions, implying incremental change over the long term, in this
instance.

The co-determination of national and European
institutional orders

Given the interactive character of Europeanization, it is essential
to employ a conceptual framework that can capture the interplay
between different spatial levels. To this end, I employ a sociological
institutionalist-inspired conceptual framework, since it is best suited
to capture the co-constitutive dimension of interaction between
human action and institutions – in the context of this study,
between security practitioners and institutions, through the concept
of social practice. In an attempt to lend greater precision to this
process, I make use of a number of concepts formulated by Giddens.
Firstly, I similarly assume that actors are embedded in their institu-
tional contexts. That is to say, they draw on the rules of the structure
they help to reproduce through those very actions. In doing so, they
display an implicit understanding of their immediate environment
and possess some notion of the consequences of their actions. This
practical form of consciousness is central to the reflexive monitoring
and organization of social practices and thus to the (re)production
of societal structures, including institutions. Actors are likely to be
capable of rationalizing their action, i.e. of explaining what they are
doing and why they are engaged in doing it. In this sense, actors
are purposeful and engage in strategic action. They may, however,

Europeanization 43

have only a limited understanding of the conditions informing their
action, as well as of the full consequences of their action. This obser-
vation is an important one to make, because it avoids attributing the
consequences of actions to coherent intent. It may be that the full
consequences of particular activities are simply not anticipated or
known to the actors involved. To this end, the knowledgeability of
human actors is bounded knowledgeability.

Secondly, in carrying out their activities, actors reproduce the

structures informing their action. Thus, while structures cannot
be said to be brought into being by social actors, due to bounded
knowledgeability, they are continually recreated by them via the
very means whereby they express themselves as actors, i.e. how
they draw on institutions. ‘Structures’ are understood as rules and
resources recursively implicated in social reproduction. Like Giddens,
I conceive of rules as comprising both normative elements and per-
ceptual schemes. Similarly, resources within the context of structure
imply authoritative resources, which derive from an ability to coor-
dinate the activity of human agents, and allocative resources, which
are the material results of authoritative resources. Structure, then,
can be conceived as the structuring properties that permit similar
social practices to exist across differing spans of time and space.
Institutions, in turn, refer to those practices that have the greatest
time–space extension within social life. Institutions, like structures,
are thus both the medium and the outcome of human action. This is
particularly important in the context of this study, since it enables an
examination of the creation of an institutional order at the EU level,
while remaining sensitive to the consequences for and the influence
of institutional orders of member states.

While historical institutionalism would, in principle, be able to

capture this through the concept of path dependency – i.e., the
impact of past policies on subsequent choices as a result of societal
forces organizing along certain lines rather than others, adopting par-
ticular identities, or developing interests in policies that are costly to
alter – there is another dimension to embeddedness that is likely to
play a significant role in informing how the policymakers of member
states respond to pressures resulting from a highly institutionalized
EU context, namely that of political identities formed vis-à-vis the
European integration process, as well as the Atlantic Alliance. The cir-
cumstances of Germany’s involvement in the European integration

44 Securing Europe

process, for example, have been quite different from those of Britain.
When Britain finally joined the EC, the Federal Republic of Germany
(FRG) had already experienced twenty years of integration. Moreover,
the FRG was not treated as a fully sovereign state when it became a
member of the EC, and was able to gain sovereign status through the
integration process. Germany’s less exclusive notion of sovereignty
is thus intimately related to its rehabilitation within the context of
the European integration project. This contrasts quite starkly with
the British case, in which the perceived surrender of sovereignty
creates controversy at almost every formal step of integration. This
is likely to be relevant to bottom-up Europeanization, as well as the
responsiveness of national institutional orders to common European
‘solutions’, i.e. how they are incorporated into domestic practices.

Concepts borrowed from Giddens are also likely to be of help

when conceiving of horizontal Europeanization. Social identi-
ties, and the position-practice relations associated with them, are
indicators of the virtual time-space of structure informing security
practitioners’ activities. They provide actors with the tools to com-
prehend the social world and are associated with normative rights,
obligations, and sanctions within particular collectivities. Horizontal
Europeanization involves actors developing a common set of rules
in a specific time-space environment. This implies developing a
common understanding of their environment, as well as normative
rights and obligations. When confronted with comprehending their
new context, they are likely to draw on their respective institutional
orders in order to make sense of the new situation. In doing so,
one may assume that they gradually assist in creating a new set of
rules common to their new collectivity, which is reflected in their
purposive action and practical consciousness. This could be thought
of as reflecting the new time-space positioning of actors, leading –
via social practices and the duality of structure – to alterations in
institutions. Certain structural features – those with the widest time-
space spans – are likely to be common to all, though coloured by
different domestic institutional orders and collective identities, to
exist in national, regional and global contexts. Global restructuring,
for example, is likely to be experienced at all levels, though perhaps
instantiated differently at each level because of the specificity of
institutions. As these sets of rules become institutionalized and influ-
ence practices and the allocation of material resources at the national

Europeanization 45

level, horizontal Europeanization might be said to be taking place.
Thus, in order to discern whether horizontal Europeanization has
occurred or is occurring, it is necessary to examine whether the dis-
course and behaviour of actors, i.e. altered practices visible through
the allocation of material resources, changed as a result of concepts
and procedures conceived within transnational European-level
policy networks.

The ESDP and JHA fields of European integration are character-

ized by facilitated cooperation. We should, therefore, expect actors’
activities in informal arenas to play a significant role in the institu-
tionalization of cooperation in security at the EU level. To this end,
the mode of Europeanization most relevant to this study is likely to
be horizontal and is most likely to occur through changes in schemes
of perception and norms, or ‘learning’. While learning is important
at all stages of Europeanization, it becomes especially important
where the EU does not work as a law-making system, but instead as
a platform for the exchange of ideas between security practitioners
from member states and, in some cases, private and public bodies.
In policy areas that are considered too politically sensitive to agree
on an EU-level policy, such as asylum policy, the OMC allows policy-
makers to engage in the process of defining what constitutes ‘best
practice’ and accept peer review of developments within their own
member states. In doing so, they develop common understandings
about the nature of the ‘problems’ at hand and about good or bad
practice in relation to achieving common ‘solutions’ to them. As
Bulmer and Radaelli point out, older examples of intergovernmental
policymaking have also produced similar types of dynamic. Where
European law is absent, soft law and political agreements are fre-
quently used. Here, as in the case of the OMC, national ministers
and officials play prominent roles, with the supranational institu-
tions playing only a minimal one. Europeanization occurs as a result
of learning among national elites, with the EU simply providing a
common platform and, in instances where representatives from EU
bodies participate, a clear input. Indeed, this type of Europeanization
may occur when only a subset of EU member states engage in coop-
eration outside the formal EU framework, as was the case with the
Schengen Agreements.

Europeanization stemming from facilitated cooperation is, how-

ever, difficult to assess. Research on this mode of Europeanization

46 Securing Europe

needs to take care not to assume a linear relationship between the
emergence of shared perceptual schemes and norms at the EU level
and changes in domestic practices and subsequent deployment
of resources. Claudio Radaelli points out that the difficulty lies in
determining whether changes in domestic policy and practices are
the result of European integration processes or the product of other
forces at work at the domestic level. Therefore, when examining the
impact of institution-building via facilitated cooperation, one needs
to be especially attentive to the local dimension.

One way of doing

this would be to look at the various factors influencing policymak-
ers’ thinking and then examine the degree to which ideas provided
through the process of facilitated cooperation appear to matter in
altering the politics of surrounding the various European security
policies. However, we might more usefully conceive of ‘other forces’
as broader institutional contexts in which actors move, but are not
fully aware of. To put it another way, employing the concept of
bounded knowledge will help to avoid such linearity.

Vertical Europeanization taking place during the negotiation phase

of European policy formation is relevant to the case study on the
Stability Pact. As mentioned earlier, it refers to instances in which
security practitioners of particular states are successful in promot-
ing national-governmental preferences and interests. Here, repre-
sentatives of a particular member state are successful in projecting
domestic institutional orders through social practices and shaping
approaches at the EU level. We might, therefore, think of this type
of Europeanization as occurring when one time-space structure, spe-
cifically an institution, disproportionately informs the emergence of
another. This seems likely to transpire as a result of the way in which
issues are framed and of perceptions of appropriate behaviour within
particular institutional contexts.

To summarize, sociological institutionalism seems particularly well-

suited to examine the transformational process of Europeanization.
Earlier, I defined Europeanization as a process of construction, diffu-
sion, and institutionalization of shared beliefs and norms, which are
first defined and consolidated in the making of EU public policy and
politics and then incorporated in the logic of domestic discourse,
identities, political structures, and public policies. Within this defini-
tion, institutions are broadly defined. They include not only formal
rules, procedures and norms, but also cognitive and moral templates

Europeanization 47

that frame the construction of meaning-informing behaviour. Actors’
preferences, interests, and identities are not assumed to be exogenous
to institutions. Similarly, sociological institutionalism defines insti-
tutions broadly and views actors’ preferences, interests, and identities
as deriving from interaction governed by institutions. In this sense,
there is a co-constitutive dimension to the relationship between
structure and agency. Perceiving individual actors and institutions
as co-constitutive of one another has the effect of emphasizing proc-
ess, rather than prejudging the outcome. Stucturationism, moreover,
elaborates further on the role of institutions in an important way. It
suggests that the outcome of individuals’ actions is not fully com-
prehended by the agents themselves and that it is these unconscious
effects of engaging in socially meaningful acts that gives institutions
their structuring qualities.

Europeanization, as defined above, implies that changes in insti-

tutional practices take place not as a result of rational egoism, but as
a result of the reworking of perceptual and normative frameworks.
From a sociological institutionalist perspective, institutions are modi-
fied in the same way. In the structurationist framework outlined
here, institutions undergo change if and when the practices of actors
change. Given that social practices are both the medium and the
outcome of structuring properties, which shape social relations, their
intersection implies an intersection of structuring properties. At the
point of intersection, modifications are likely to occur. This means
that institutional orders, along with social practices, undergo trans-
formation at the points of intersection. Since change is conceived
as the result of a conjuncture of circumstances, institutional change
in various domestic settings is likely to vary. This is because actors
are reflexive; they attempt to order social practices based on their
practical knowledge, resulting in diverging responses to the same
factors. Since their practical knowledge reflects their institutional
embeddedness, institutional orders shape the mechanisms by which
organizations are able to conform or deviate from established pat-
terns, which suggests that the institutional sources of stability, as
well as change, are important.

In relation to change, structurationism’s focus on and specification

of social practices also helps us to deal with the relationship between
different spheres of social life, as well as that between different
spatial levels. In terms of the ‘mechanisms’ of Europeanization, it

48 Securing Europe

implies an increased focus on the framing of issues, the construction
of identities and interests in different spheres of social activity and
analytical levels is required.

Applying this conceptual framework in the case of horizontal

Europeanization requires, firstly, identification of the actors involved
in informal networks in order to discern the position-practices of
these actors. Secondly, having done this, it is possible to make sup-
positions about the way in which the issues are most likely have
been framed by them. This is helpful in discerning their knowledge-
ability. Thirdly, it is important to ascertain the ‘boundedness’ of their
knowledgeability in order to make out the unintended consequences
of their practices. This is important because it is likely to illustrate
the sense in which their practices are more closely linked to their
more immediate contexts, thereby avoiding attributing too much
coherence to developments. Fourthly, I identify the extent to which
common ‘rules’ (perceptual schemes and norms) have emerged in
the context of informal/decentralized networks. I then show how
the ‘rules’ established by these practitioners gain authority and begin
to inform policy and determine resource allocation at the national
level. Here, I look for the creation of common ways of understanding
‘problems’ that are distinctly European, rather than reflecting par-
ticular national institutional orders. Fifthly, I identify the diffusion
of those rules to the national level and show how they are affecting
resource allocation. Here, I look for signs of European ‘solutions’
elaborated in these decentralized policy networks informing policy
and resource allocation. Sixthly, I consider other factors that could
have influenced shifts in cognitive-normative frameworks and the
deployment of resources. I demonstrate how domestic institutions
were responding to broader issues and encouraging further formal
integration, particularly in relation to the end of the Cold War.

In relation to the kind of vertical Europeanization examined in this

study, it is necessary, firstly, to discern what position-practices and
identities appear to play a role in policy formation. In the case of the
SP, this implies showing how German security practitioners, in par-
ticular, understood the problem and how to go about dealing with it,
and how their way of apprehending the problem reflected German
collective identity and German strategic culture. Secondly, it means
identifying how the EU’s shift in approach to SEE has been shaped
by the practical knowledge and identities of German practitioners.

Europeanization 49

Lastly, I attempt to discern how the broader institutional contexts
were influential in enabling the promotion of their preferences and
interests during the policy formation stage.

The questions informing the case studies dealing with the ESDP

and JHA are, thus: (1) what actors are involved in policy networks?;
(2) what position-practices have they brought to bear on institution-
building within these contexts?; (3) what common understandings
and norms have they developed in decentralized policy networks?;
(4) to what extent do these new rules appear to have diffused to
the national level?; and (5) how have broader institutional contexts
influenced the ‘turn towards Europe’? In relation to the case study
on the establishment of the SP, the relevant questions are: (1) what
were the position-practices and identities of German practitioners
involved in the creation of the SP and how have they helped to
shape the EU’s current approach to SEE; and (2) what role have the
broader institutional contexts of actors played in bringing about this
outcome?

Conclusion

This chapter began by outlining the shortcomings of the literature
addressing developments in post-Cold War European security. It was
argued that descriptive accounts, as well as those self-consciously
theoretical accounts drawing on neo-realism and realism, and regime
theory, tend to suffer from a number of weaknesses. Firstly, states are
often assumed to be unitary actors rationally pursuing their prefer-
ences and interests, which are taken as given. Secondly, in many
analyses, a narrow conception of EU governance, which views the
continuation of the nation state and the growth of supranationalism
as mutually exclusive, fails to provide the tools with which to address
the connection between different spatial levels. In the absence of the
emergence of a supranational state, many observers have sought to
explain European cooperation as a result of unitary states coming
together because of shared interests, when the EU governance struc-
ture, in fact, allows fragments of the state an important role in driv-
ing the direction of integration. The neo-Marxist accounts discussed
tend, for their part, to give insufficient weight to the cognitive
dimension of the European integration process. In addition, this has
led Gowan and Cafruny to somewhat overlook the importance of the

50 Securing Europe

‘internal’ security domain for the future of the European-American
security relationship.

In view of these shortcomings, I suggested that new institutionalism

could provide useful concepts with which to account better for recent
developments in the area of European security. I discussed the various
strands of new institutionalism. Common to all variants – rational
choice institutionalism, historical institutionalism and sociological
institutionalism – is the assumption that institutions affect actions
and outcomes, and that they can have power effects with regards to
the distributional consequences. To this end, new institutionalists,
with the exception of the rational choice version, contest the notion
that institutions simply reflect social activity and are the result of
rational competition between disaggregated units.

Lastly, I set out a sociological-institutionalist-inspired analytical

framework in order to be better able to capture the co-constitutive
character of the European integration process. It adopts an under-
standing of actors as embedded in their immediate institutional
contexts. These actors draw on the institutional orders they help to
create when taking purposive action. Yet their practical knowledge
is bounded in the sense that they cannot be aware of the entirety of
factors influencing their actions, or the full consequences of those
actions. Unconscious motivation and unintended effects thus enter
into the analysis. The focus on agency and institutions is important
in relation to horizontal Europeanization because it helps to avoid
depicting the state as a unitary actor and can accommodate a wider
conception of governance within the EU than those accounts dis-
cussed in Chapter 1. In addition, it provides the conceptual tools
with which to address the connection between different spatial levels
while focusing on developments in both ‘internal’ and ‘external’
security fields. Drawing attention to the embeddedness of actors
also helps to account for variations in the way in which different EU
member states respond to pressures resulting from a highly institu-
tionalized context. And, finally, it allows us to capture the impact of
the position-practices and identities of security practitioners during
the construction of policies, which provides insight into the ‘mecha-
nisms’ of vertical Europeanization.

The European Security and
Defence Policy

Introduction

In the early 1990s, the politics of European security was characterized
by divergences between major members of the EU. On the one hand,
some countries, like Britain, were in favour of the Alliance’s primacy
and opposed to any transfer of competence in security matters to the
EU. On the other hand, France was reasserting its desire to strengthen
its relationship with Germany, and suggested raising its military col-
laboration with Bonn to a European level.

During the wars in the

former Yugoslavia, European politicians and officials were painfully
reminded of their dependence on American military assets provided
via NATO, as well as the need to develop the tools with which to
respond effectively to crises. The wars acted as a catalyst for the devel-
opment of the CFSP. At the 1992 Maastricht European Council meet-
ing, it was decided that the CFSP would replace EPC as the second
pillar of the EU.

As a result, the 1992 TEU was the first treaty to con-

tain provisions anchoring the Union’s responsibilities in the field of
security. Lacking military capabilities of its own, the Treaty envisaged
that the EU would request the WEU to plan and implement military
measures on its behalf.

The defence aspect of political union was,

nevertheless, put on hold. Pursuing greater autonomy within a NATO
framework proved unsatisfactory, however. In 1999, the governments
of EU member states agreed to create an EU security and defence
policy to support its common foreign and security policy. This was a
significant development, since it gave the EU a military role that it
hitherto lacked, even though it stopped short of common defence.

54 Securing Europe

As mentioned, accounts of the ESDP that draw on the traditional

terms of IR theorizing explain increased cooperation in this area as
the result of states acting as coherent, undifferentiated units, ration-
ally pursuing their interests. This, however, would have failed to
capture the governance structure in the area of ESDP, which gives
actors in informal and/or decentralized policy networks a fundamen-
tal role in driving developments. Having neglected this, they would
have been unable to detect the way in which national interests are
formed and modified through the interaction of practitioners active
within specific institutional contexts. This suggests that the focus
should be on practitioners engaged in the policy-making process and
their position-practices, rather than on monolithic states and their
interests. Moreover, when these dimensions are taken into account,
interpretations of the significance of the ESDP for transatlantic secu-
rity relations that explain developments as the result of balancing
behaviour vis-à-vis the US are left wanting.

In this chapter, I first briefly outline the reframing of the defence

issue and emergence of the common ESDP. I discuss how the ESDP
developed in response to ‘technical’ requirements or ‘capability
needs’, rather than any grand ideas about military integration as such.
Secondly, I contend that even though the ESDP is an intergovernmental
policy area, largely Brussels-based political and military bodies play
an important role in the ongoing capabilities development process.
Thus, instead of being driven by inter-state bargains, struck on the
basis of pre-defined interests and identities, the ESDP is to some
extent being elaborated within a decentralized policy network. I there-
fore look at the way in which actors within these networks, which are
embedded in particular institutional contexts and possess a specific
knowledgeability, have come together to form common ways of view-
ing the ‘problem’. I then show that while they consciously pursue cer-
tain ‘technical’ objectives, the consequences of their activities extend
far beyond those immediate ‘technical’ questions and have significant
political consequences. ‘Filling the capabilities gap’ is, in fact, leading
to the integration of European militaries and defence industries, as
well as the growth of Brussels-based institutions with responsibility
in these areas. There is thus a sense in which an expansive logic is
created, leading to a re-orientation towards ‘Europe’. However, as
will be shown, the emergence of a common security identity, which
is based on some notion of the ‘common good’, is also beginning to

The European Security and Defence Policy 55

drive developments that affect state sovereignty as it is expressed in
the deployment of armed forces. Finally, I look at the significance of
increased military cooperation within the context of the ESDP for
transatlantic security relations, particularly with respect to EU–NATO
relations.

Reframing defence: The emergence of the ESDP

As mentioned in Chapter 1, a number of initiatives were taken prior
to the establishment of the ESDP to encourage military cooperation
between EC member states, none of which got off the ground. They
included the 1950 Pleven Plan, which envisaged the formation of
a European army attached to the political institutions of a united
Europe, and the EDC treaty, which was less supranational and envis-
aged a close relationship with NATO. In the early 1960s, France also
put forward several proposals aimed at reducing Europe’s depend-
ency on the defence and military assets of NATO and, therefore the
US, as well as reforming Europe by transforming it into a voluntary
union of independent states.

Following the end of the Cold War, greater autonomy within

the Alliance was once again sought by Europeans. This necessarily
implied developing more autonomous military capabilities, since
NATO’s military capabilities were essentially those of the US. The
issue was thus framed in terms of ‘capability requirements’. Efforts
were made both informally and formally to reduce Europeans’
dependency on US military assets. A low level of integration with
the US in the field of intelligence, compounded by the Gaullist tra-
dition, placed France in the vanguard of efforts outside the EC/EU
framework to strengthen Europe’s military autonomy vis-à-vis NATO
and the US at this time, specifically in relation to intelligence and C

capabilities.

Dependence on the US during the 1991 Gulf War and

Bosnia peace implementation force (IFOR) from 1995–6, for example,
convinced the majority of French security practitioners that Europe
needed to improve its autonomous collection capabilities, par-
ticularly with regard to space-based assets.

Germany has tended to

share French concerns about relying on US intelligence.

During the

Kosovo conflict, German defence officials complained that on three
occasions, the US provided inadequate or misleading material that
had implications for German forces on the ground.

Consequently,

56 Securing Europe

Germany has also, albeit sporadically, been involved in efforts to
enhance Europe’s intelligence capacities.

In relation to Europe’s imagery intelligence capabilities, French

policymakers have also worked hard to strengthen the European
capacity to interpret the resulting intelligence data. A major part of
this effort was the creation of the WEU Satellite Centre at Torrejon
in Spain, which became operational in March 1993. The Centre
is funded by France, Germany, Italy, the UK, Spain, Belgium, and
Holland. It initially purchased French SPOT satellite images, later
obtaining images from India’s IRS-1C, Hélios 1 and Russian satellites.
It also orders images from ERS-1 and 2 (European Space Agency),
Landsat 4 and 5 (USA), and Radarsat (Canada).

The Torrejon Satellite

Centre has since been transferred to the EU in support of the ESDP.
In order to reduce Europe’s dependence on NATO and US C

I capa-

bilities and infrastructure, France showcased a C

I capability during

a multinational exercise involving France, Spain, Italy, and Portugal
by using command and information systems with intelligence assets
such as Hélios. Work is also underway on a Franco-German successor
to the Sycaruse II network, which presently provides French forces
with virtually global connectivity.

The European desire for greater autonomy was, however, initially

formally accommodated within the framework of NATO. At the 1994
NATO summit in Brussels, member states approved the development
of a European Security and Defence Identity (ESDI) – an instrument
aimed at facilitating European efforts to develop ‘separable but not
separate’ capabilities through the WEU.

WEU-led crisis manage-

ment operations were to be enabled by the US-inspired concept of
Combined Joint Task Forces (CJTFs). The idea behind the CJTFs was to
provide a framework within which NATO could continue to provide
the command and organizational means necessary for multi-national,
wide-ranging missions that would not always include the entire NATO
membership. They thus implicitly provided the US with a way of main-
taining control over decision-making within the transatlantic alliance
and enshrined the EU’s dependence on NATO/US capabilities, without
guaranteeing that those capabilities would be available in the event of
a crisis situation.

The ESDI, therefore, provided a means of strength-

ening a ‘European pillar of defence’ within the framework of NATO.

Improving European capabilities within a NATO framework,

however, failed to provide sufficient incentive and, as far as some

The European Security and Defence Policy 57

in Europe were concerned, did not go far enough towards allow-
ing greater European autonomy. Difficulties of coordination within
NATO and the degree of control exerted by the US during the inter-
vention in Kosovo appeared to galvanize European governments
into taking further steps towards developing greater autonomy in
terms of political decision-making and military capacity – this time,
however, within the framework of the EU. Two significant events took
place in December 1998. At Potsdam, on 1 December, the French and
German governments issued a joint statement, which declared that
they were in the process of defining a CFSP and a common defence
policy, that they continued to be committed to integrating the WEU
into the EU, and that they recognized the importance of equip-
ping the EU with its own military and operational capacities. These
capacities were to be created either from within the WEU framework,
from multinational forces, such as the Eurocorps,

or via capabilities

made available by NATO, as agreed at the North Atlantic Council in
Berlin in June 1996. The Franco-German meeting was followed by a
Franco-British meeting on 3–4 December. The outcome of the latter
was the much heralded St Malo Declaration, which affirmed that the
EU required ‘the capacity for autonomous action, backed up by a cred-
ible military force, the means to decide to use them, and a readiness to
do so, in order to respond to international crises’ so that the EU could
‘take decisions and approve military action where the Alliance as a
whole is not engaged.’

What is important here is that military coop-

eration was framed in terms of supporting crisis management, rather
than common defence, making it much easier for all states, including
neutrals, to agree on. In addition, at the time, and perhaps still, fram-
ing ESDP as dealing with crisis management alone was probably the
only way forward for the EU in order not to duplicate NATO.

The St Malo Declaration was clearly aimed at the European objec-

tive of gaining greater political and military autonomy within a
restructured Alliance.

Doing so by engaging the EU in common

external action in the area of crisis management logically led to the
construction of a common European security and defence policy as
a distinctive part of the CFSP. The ESDP, however, lacked a treaty
basis, since the 1997 Amsterdam Treaty still provided for the WEU
to be called upon to plan and implement military action on the EU’s
behalf. At the European Council summit in Cologne in June 1999,
member states made it known that they were determined to see the

58 Securing Europe

Union play a greater role on the international stage and that they
intended to give the EU the ‘necessary means and capabilities to
assume its responsibilities regarding a common European policy on
security and defence.’

Not unsurprisingly, the St Malo Declaration focused on the ques-

tion of capabilities development. Specifically, EU member states set
themselves the so-called Headline Goal at the Helsinki summit. The
aim was to put at the EU’s disposal a military force, specified as the
creation of a rapid reaction force of 60,000 troops, deployable within
60 days, with additional air and naval capabilities as needed, and
sustainable in the field for up to one year.

The missions assigned to

this rapid reaction force are those defined at Petersberg in 1992 by
the WEU and inscribed in the TEU – the so-called Petersberg tasks.
These include ‘humanitarian and rescue tasks, peacekeeping tasks
and tasks of combat forces in crisis management, including peace-
making’.

In order to be able to carry out these operations, particular

attention was given to the means necessary to fulfil them, notably
deployability, sustainability, interoperability, mobility, survivability,
and command and control. At Laeken in December 2001, the ESDP
was declared operational. However, it was emphasized that the
continued development of means and capabilities would allow the
Union to take on more demanding operations.

As part of the ESDP, EU member states also committed themselves

to strengthening the Union’s civil component of crisis management
capabilities. With the experience of Bosnia, particularly the civil
administration of Mostar by the WEU, the European Multinational
Protection Force (EMPF) in Albania and the Multinational Advisory
Police Element (MAPE) in Operation Alba, also Albania, the Union
has acquired considerable expertise in civilian crisis management,
making it an obvious area to be developed further within the ESDP.
At the Santa Maria da Feira European Council summit in June 2000,
member states agreed on an Action Plan aimed at improving capa-
bilities in the areas of police cooperation, the rule of law, civilian
administration, and civil protection. The Action Plan declared mem-
ber states’ intention to create, by 2003, a pool of 5000 police officers,
200 judges, prosecutors, and other experts, assessment teams to be
dispatched within 3–7 hours, as well as intervention teams consist-
ing of up to 2000 people for deployment at short notice, able to assist
in humanitarian actions through emergency operations.

The European Security and Defence Policy 59

In order to achieve this objective, it was decided at the European

Council summit in Helsinki in December 1999 that permanent,
mostly Brussels-based, political and military bodies should be estab-
lished within the Council structures. These included a Political
Security Committee (PSC) – the EU’s equivalent of NATO’s North
Atlantic Council (NAC)

– the EU Military Committee (EUMC) – an

EU military authority – and the European Union Military Staff
(EUMS) – a military staff tasked with implementing the decisions
of the EUMC, performing early warning, situation assessments, and
strategic planning for crisis management, including identification of
relevant forces. These institutions were established under the 2000
Nice Treaty. The Treaty also transferred a number of institutions that
were previously part of the WEU acquis to the EU, namely the WEU’s
Satellite Centre in Torrejon, Spain, and its Institute of Security Studies.
These institutions were added to two other bodies that were estab-
lished within the Council under the 1997 Amsterdam Treaty (as part
of the CFSP): the post of Secretary-General of the Council, currently
held by Javier Solana, who also acts as high representative for the CFSP,
and a Policy Planning and Early Warning Unit (PPEWU), tasked with
monitoring, analysis, and assessment of international developments.
It also provides policy recommendations to the Council and assists the
high representative.

Europeanization of military security

Analyses of the ESDP that rely on the assumptions of conventional
IR theorizing would lead us to believe that the growth in coopera-
tion in this domain is the result of states rationally pursuing their
interests at summits. It is true that, in formal terms, the ESDP is an
intergovernmental policy, based on consensus. Qualified majority
voting (QMV) does not yet exist in this policy domain. This means
that member states can neither be outvoted nor compelled to con-
tribute forces or funds for operations against their will. If no mem-
ber state wishes to contribute capabilities, operations simply cannot
take place. The only way of bypassing the requirement of unanimity
lies in the option of abstaining in a vote, not participating in an
operation, and not contributing funds to it. Denmark, for exam-
ple, has even negotiated an explicit ‘opt-in’ (rather than ‘opt-out’)
clause, whereby it is automatically exempt from participating in the

60 Securing Europe

implementation of the policy unless it decides to do so. In compari-
son to member states, the Commission, European Parliament, and
European Court of Justice have rather limited formal roles.

Official

decisions related to the ESDP are taken at the highest Council level,
be it the General Affairs and External Relations Council (GAERC) of
EU ministers or, whenever appropriate and necessary, the European
Council itself. Even proposals entailing first, or even third, pillar
measures – which lie in the competence of the EU Finance (ECOFIN)
or JHA ministers – are formally agreed and adopted by heads of state
or government. At present there is no Council of Defence Ministers.
EU ministers of defence can only meet either informally – i.e.,
without taking decisions – or in conjunction with the GAERC.

However, assuming that states are the principal actors, bargaining

with each other on the basis of their national interest to achieve
desirable outcomes, would make it impossible to ‘see’ the decentral-
ized nature of the policy framework in this area of European inte-
gration. The set of bodies tasked with implementing the Petersberg
tasks and supporting capabilities are beginning to develop a greater
capacity to influence the policy process as a greater degree of decen-
tralization takes place.

The Council Secretariat has, for instance, an

improved capacity to shape developments, which essentially means
that an EU administrative body is gaining in prominence, alongside
the intergovernmental military and political structures. The role
of the High Representative has evolved significantly. While it has
remained minimal in those areas where there is either no consensus
or open dissent about developments, it has broadened its scope and
visibility in others. The High Representative has also gained some
room for autonomous initiative in policy formulation. His office
was, for instance, responsible for the formulation and elaboration of
the European Security Strategy (ESS). Perhaps most importantly, the
gradual increase in the number and technicality of issues dealt with
under the banner of the ESDP means that a number of actors, includ-
ing military experts acting in an international capacity, the Council
secretariat, and national experts from the member states have been
taking part in different working group formations in Brussels and
have been central to the development of common ‘rules’ – both
symbolic and normative – that have had an important influence on
the policy process and the resulting allocation of resources.

Defence

ministers have only recently become more directly involved in giving

The European Security and Defence Policy 61

guidance to these working groups. Thus, while officially designated
as an intergovernmental policy area, the ESDP is largely driven by
the activities undertaken by transnational policy practitioners within
decentralized policy networks. These actors are, moreover, gaining
an ever greater ability to influence the policy process as more and
more decentralization takes place.

Rather than rationally acting states being the principal actors driv-

ing integration in the domain of security policy and military plan-
ning, mid-level officials and military representatives active within
this Brussels-based policy network have a significant role to play in
the policy process. The influence that these actors have on the devel-
opment and implementation of the ESDP is intimately related to
their knowledgeability and their framing of the ‘problem’. Initially,
the capabilities development process was predominantly framed in a
‘technical’ manner, the emphasis being on building up the capabili-
ties with which to carry out the Petersberg tasks as outlined in the
first Headline Goal.

The capabilities review process nevertheless

acted as a platform for the development of common understand-
ings about best practice at this stage. Some capabilities issues have
become common European ‘problems’ and common solutions to
them have been sought within this decentralized framework. To
this end the capability development process contains efforts to har-
monize military requirements, amounting to a form of regulative
effort at the European level, driving Europeanization, although it
is ‘soft’ and bottom-up in its approach.

Framing issues as ‘techni-

cal’ also created a type of expansive ‘logic’ as issues became linked
and as new EU-level bodies had to be created. As the process went
on, however, and the second 2010 Headline Goal was established,
a common understanding of the security environment and appro-
priate responses to it, as embodied in the ESS, began to inform the
process and, specifically, to influence force structures. In this section,
I look more closely at the capabilities development process in order
to gain a better understanding of how Europeanization in this field
is occurring. First, I examine how actors most heavily implicated in
the Capabilities Development Mechanism establish a common set
of ‘rules’. I look at what understandings and norms emerge from
these decentralized policy networks, or, put another way, the way
in which actors, embedded in particular institutional orders have
come together and formed common ways of viewing the ‘problem’

62 Securing Europe

and responding to it. I then consider how these ‘rules’ are, at least
in some cases, altering the institutional orders and thus ‘external’
security apparatuses of key member states.

The capabilities development mechanism

The implementation of the Headline Goal got underway soon after
it was agreed in late 1999. It involved the development of capabili-
ties in the absence of firm agreement on the kinds of missions the
EU might undertake. A Headline Goal Task Force (later to become
the EUMS), comprising national defence planning experts, began
to work on the capabilities question in late 2000, supported by an
interim body that would later become the EUMC. Thus, the major
participants were defence officials and military representatives. The
Task Force drew up an inventory of the projected capability require-
ments of the future EU crisis management force. Based on this inven-
tory – the Helsinki Headline Catalogue – member states specified
what they were able to contribute to the Headline Goal Force and, at
the Capabilities Commitment Conference in November 2000, they
agreed, on a voluntary basis, to earmark these military forces for
the creation of a crisis management force. While the target number
of troops was declared met at the conference, qualitative shortfalls
remained, particularly in the areas of strategic lift, deployable opera-
tion headquarters and C

I. In order to address these ‘gaps’, a review

mechanism was initiated. Its objective was to evaluate EU capability
goals, monitor the force catalogue, identify and harmonize national
contributions, as well as to review progress towards already agreed
contributions, both in terms of interoperability and availability.

In November 2001, member states agreed to set up a European

Capability Action Plan (ECAP), with a view to providing a framework
within which the remaining shortfalls could be addressed. The ECAP
contained 19 panels of national defence planning experts, each
tasked with developing strategies with which to close the ‘capabili-
ties gap’. The panels met independently and were composed of at
least one ‘lead nation’ per panel. Panels reported to EUMC, their
work being validated by the Headline Goal Task Force (EUMS), which
is composed of military staff.

Again, participants would have been

drawn from the defence establishments and armed forces of member
states. These actors were thus concerned with developing European
military capabilities based on a number of operational scenarios. In

The European Security and Defence Policy 63

other words, they conceived of the ‘problem’ in ‘technical’, military
terms.

The ECAP panels presented their final reports in March 2003, in

which they made recommendations for rectifying shortfalls. Some of
these shortfalls could be met by revising member-state contributions.
Others, however, would require large-scale procurement projects.
Based on these findings, ECAP launched a second phase in the
spring of that year, aimed at implementing the recommendations
of the panels. A number of Project Groups (PGs) were established by
the EUMC and the PSC to develop measures to tackle shortfalls.

According to a source interviewed by the author, technical issues
were discussed in the project groups, which were comprised of mili-
tary representatives and engineers.

The PGs focused on the implementation of concrete projects.

Many had a qualitative focus and concentrated on multinational
solutions. The NBC PG, for example, aimed at the creation of a
multinational NBC battalion, and Strategic Air Lift PG aimed at the
creation, in 2005, of a multinationally coordinated air transport
resource. Different types of EU Coordination Centres, for example
regarding strategic sealift, were also discussed, as well as the creation
of a pool of experienced staff officers.

The capabilities question was

thus not only becoming a European rather than a national issue, but
was also giving rise to common European solutions. In other words,
closing the ‘capabilities gap’ was leading to greater military integra-
tion. In terms of these actors’ knowledgeability, this is most likely
to have been viewed as a ‘logical’ outcome of improving European
capabilities, given the cost of procuring military equipment and the
fairly limited defence budgets of individual member states, even if it
was not their intent. A number of other consequences, however, are
unlikely to have been foreseen. To the extent that they were not, this
illustrates the bounded nature of their knowledge.

While the ECAP process was originally intended to operate on a

bottom-up, voluntary basis – i.e. member states themselves were
responsible for the delivery of military capabilities through the
direction of the ECAP PGs – greater coordination at the EU level
quickly became necessary. With pressure upon member states to
offer capabilities, and overcoming deficits being a political issue
rather than a legal requirement, the PGs lacked coherence, which in
turn threatened to jeopardize the realization of the Headline Goal.

64 Securing Europe

According to a source interviewed by the author, the PGs were quite
wild at first.

The fact that some PGs requested greater guidance is

an indication that a great deal was left to military experts to work
out rather than having been decided beforehand at summits. This
eventually led the EU Council to establish a means of monitoring
the PGs’ progress vis-à-vis attainment of the Headline Goal. The
EUMS was subsequently tasked with developing an ECAP ‘road map’
intended to provide greater guidance to the groups, and to assist
them in bridging the gap between the voluntary basis on which
ECAP Project Groups operate and the attainment of the Headline
Goal. Defence Ministers are also likely to become more involved in
the capabilities development process.

A Capabilities Development Mechanism was created in early 2003.

While the capabilities process had already been informally institu-
tionalized, with force catalogues being produced on a yearly basis and
progress catalogues every second year, and Capabilities Commitment
Conferences held regularly, the Development Mechanism further
formalized the relationships between the actors involved in the
process, and also between the EU and NATO through consultative
channels. To this end, it provides an obvious example of how itera-
tive contact creates trusted relations and how soft law has practical
implications.

There have, of course, been other consequences of meeting a

‘capabilities gap’. As mentioned, the capabilities process has increas-
ingly involved defence research and procurement issues, which
themselves are linked to questions of national as well as European
economic growth. The interrelationship between these issues has
resulted in the inclusion of the defence industrial concerns in delib-
erations: whereas the first phase of the ECAP process did not involve
a defence industry dimension, National Armaments Directors
(NADs) and representatives from the defence industry have since
become involved in the ECAP framework, particularly in relation to
the establishment of the defence capabilities and acquisition agency.
This is testimony to the expansive ‘logic’ created by the framing of
the issue as an ‘objective need’, creating additional ‘requirements’
leading to the expansion of the issue.

In order to encourage cooperation in the area of procurement,

as well as in joint development, in June 2003 in Thessaloniki, the
European Council tasked the relevant bodies of the Council with

The European Security and Defence Policy 65

taking the necessary steps towards the creation of an intergovern-
mental agency, the European Defence Agency (EDA), dealing with
capabilities development, research, acquisition and armaments
during 2004. In February 2004 an Agency Establishment Team
(AET) was set up to prepare the conditions for the creation and the
operational dimensions of the Agency. In particular, the AET took
forward work on the financial, legal and administrative aspects of
the Agency’s creation and specified missions. Based on the final
report of the AET, RELEX counsellors and COREPER

worked out a

‘Joint Action on the Establishment of a European Defence Agency
(EDA)’, which GAERC adopted in mid-June. The precise role of the
Agency will be to: (1) develop defence capabilities in the field of crisis
management; (2) promote and enhance European armaments coop-
eration; (3) contribute to identifying and, if necessary, implement
policies and measures aimed at strengthening the European Defence
Industrial Base; and (4) promote, in liaison with the Commission
where appropriate, research aimed at fulfilling future defence and
security capabilities requirements. The agency will initially act as
a coordinating point for existing armaments bodies (OCARR, LoI,
Framework Agreement, WEAG/WEAO),

and will assist the Council

in the capabilities development process. When fully operational, it
will be responsible for coordinating operational needs and capability
acquisition and development, and will incorporate relevant elements
of pre-existing arrangements.

A link between military planning and

defence research and procurement has thus been brought within the
EU framework, as well as strengthened. This is perceived as particu-
larly important for harmonizing capability requirements, fostering
standardization of equipment, and translating common capability
needs into procurement projects.

EDA operates under the supervision of the Council. The High

Representative provides the link between the agency and the
Council. The Steering Board, the decision-making body of the
agency, is composed of Defence Ministers from the 24 participating
states, i.e. all EU member states except Denmark. A representative
from the Commission and the chairman of the EUMC also par-
ticipate in twice-yearly steering board meeting, as well as attend
meetings at all levels.

The relationship between the agency and

the Commission is one of exchange of expertise and advice in those
areas where the activities of the Community have a bearing on

66 Securing Europe

EDA’s mission and where the activities of the agency are relevant
to those of the Community. The agency therefore consults with
the Commission on issues related to strengthening the Defence
Technology and Industrial Base (DTIB) and creating an internation-
ally-competitive defence equipment market, as well as maximizing
complementarity and synergy between defence and civil or secu-
rity-related research programmes. The Commission representative’s
objective is to bring to the table what is being done within the
Community.

As a result, it is likely that an economic imperative

will constitute an increasingly important part of the way in which
the issue is framed. It is probable that the Steering Board will also
meet at the level of National Armaments Directors, national Research
Directors and national capability planners. The agency will also con-
sult representatives from the defence industry.

Day-to-day business

will be carried out by European and national civil servants working
within the agency. This means that officials from the Commission,
senior defence officials from member states, as well as representatives
from the defence industry, will have a significant influence on EDA’s
activities, suggesting that the agency will propel the creation of a
continental defence industrial and procurement market forward. The
framing of the ‘problem’ in ‘technical’ terms has thus given Brussels-
based security practitioners greater influence in directing develop-
ments. One of the major initiatives of EDA thus far has been the
establishment of a voluntary code of conduct designed to increase
peer pressure in the area of procurement.

This was based on the

belief that there is a need for common standards. In the absence of a
legal mechanism with which to do this, employing peer pressure to
bring about greater standardization is perceived as a must.

The agency also seeks to establish a set of benchmarks and mile-

stones with which to evaluate progress, particularly in the area of
interoperability, deployability, and other critical requirements, the
end goal being to provide the capabilities that the ESDP ‘requires’.
It will increasingly participate in the Capabilities Development
Mechanism. It may also translate Council capabilities guidelines
into specific plans of action for ECAP PGs. In practice, this will mean
that experts from EDA will assist the ECAP PGs. Over time, the ini-
tiatives and projects of EDA will feed into the ECAP process. In fact,
some of the PGs became Integrated Defence Teams (IDTs) within
EDA, which is indicative of the degree of synergy between EDA and

The European Security and Defence Policy 67

the Capabilities Defence Mechanism.

If successful in its mission,

the agency will encourage closer defence industrial cooperation,
aimed at strengthening Europe’s industrial potential in the area of
strategic industries, and establish a link between military planning
and defence research and procurement, which will also result in a
greater harmonization of capability requirements, standardization
of equipment and, thereby, increasing common European procure-
ment projects.

A Brussels-based organization will thus increasingly

coordinate the research and procurement activities of EU member
states – something that would have been anathema to member states
several years ago and continues to be a sensitive issue for some.

A second headline goal – the 2010 Headline Goal – which was

put together following the divisions over the war in Iraq, as well
as in view of impending enlargement of the Union, has been
guided by the EU’s security strategy, ‘A Secure Europe in a Better
World’, which was formulated by the High Representative’s team.
This means that an emerging EU security identity is now advanc-
ing developments further. The ESS’s emphasis on the need for a
comprehensive approach to security, i.e. one that is able to address
both ‘internal’ and ‘external’ dimensions of security, suggests that
the capabilities issue will gradually become more and more linked
to concerns about how to make the most of Europe’s technological
base. In many instances civil, security, and defence applications draw
upon the same technology. Technologies initiated for US defence
purposes, for example, have led to significant commercial develop-
ments – the Internet and the Global Positioning System (GPS) being
among the best-known examples. This implies the need for increased
coordination in the development of other capabilities in order to
encourage not only cost-effective and interoperable solutions, but
also commercial benefits. A report, entitled ‘Research for a Secure
Europe’, produced by the Group of Personalities in the field of
Security Research – an informal body, set up outside of the EU
framework comprising academics, European Commissioners and
parliamentarians, representatives from industry, members of the
network armaments bodies, and the EU High Representatives – has
recently put forward this exact argument, stressing the additional
commercial benefits of promoting a common technological base.
During the negotiations of the EU budget for the period 2007–13,
the Commission promoted the establishment of a security research

68 Securing Europe

programme, which would focus on security threats that affect a
broad range of policy areas. For example, the security programme
could fund new technologies, such as iris scans, that would be
linked to attempts to identify people involved in terrorist activities
at border checkpoints.

Moreover, by identifying threats to Europe as a whole, such as

international terrorism, proliferation of weapons of mass destruc-
tion, failed states, and organized crime, the ESS

has led to more

detailed defence planning at the European level. Whereas the first
Headline Goal was framed in terms of reducing a ‘capabilities gap’,
i.e. in ‘technical’ terms, the 2010 Headline Goal is largely informed
by the ESS, which calls, inter alia, on member states to ‘voluntarily
transform their forces by progressively developing a high degree of
interoperability, both at technical, procedural and conceptual lev-
els’.

It is also informed by the ‘evolution of the strategic environ-

ment and of technology.’

The emphasis is much more on military

integration than was the case in the previous Headline Goal and
identifies a list of desired milestones within the period up to 2010.
It envisaged, for example, the creation of a civil-military cell within
the EUMS in 2004, in accordance with the December 2003 European
Council Conclusions; the establishment of EDA in the course of
2004; the implementation of EU Strategic lift joint coordination by
2005, with a view to achieving necessary capacity and full efficiency
in strategic lift by 2010; improvement of the performance of all
levels of EU operations by developing appropriate compatibility and
network linkage of all communications equipment and assets both
terrestrial and space based by 2010; and the development of rapidly
deployable battle groups by 2007.

An important dimension of the 2010 Headline Goal originates

from a Franco-British initiative, both of which countries have strate-
gic cultures in which the use of force to attain security policy objec-
tives is an established principle, presented as the so-called battle
group concept in February 2004 to address the shortfall in highly
mobile, specialized forces, rapidly deployable and able to carry out
operations in difficult terrain. Specifically, the battle group concept
envisages the creation of tactical groups, comprising approximately
1500 troops, including support, to be deployable within 15 days.
These forces will be designed specifically, though not exclusively, in
response to UN requests, and could be used to stabilize failing states.

The European Security and Defence Policy 69

The aim was to establish two to three high-readiness battle groups
by 2005, and seven to nine groups by 2007. In early 2007, the EU
announced the ability to undertake two concurrent battlegroup-sized
operations. As regards the composition of these groups, a member
state may form a group alone, in cooperation with other member
states as the ‘lead nation’ or in cooperation with several states. The
reference to the UN and the explicit mention of failing states is an
indication of the influence of the ESS on the capabilities-development
process, suggesting the emergence of shared understandings of the
threats facing Europe and appropriate means of responding to them,
as well as norms establishing standards of best practice relating to
integrative efforts.

The implementation of solutions designed to meet these exigen-

cies are currently being worked out by the ECAP Project Groups. The
work of the ISTAR Information Exchange Framework Project is, for
example, working towards the development of an EU Information
Sharing Policy and associated framework, which was due to be
implemented by 2010, with an interim architecture established by
2006. The Space Based Assets Project Group is contributing to the
establishment of an EU Space Policy. The Global Approach on
Deployability (GAD) results from the work of Projects on Strategic
Transport and will lead to the establishment of a coordination cell
for EU-led crisis management operations. Taken together, these PGs
are playing a key role in improving overall military cooperation and
interoperability between EU member states.

Facilitated cooperation is thus acting as a platform for the insti-

tutionalization of European military cooperation. It is important
to remember that bounded nature of practitioners’ practical knowl-
edge implies that they are unlikely to have been fully aware of
the influence of broader institutional contexts on their behaviour,
i.e. the extent to which connections being made between issues
resonated with concerns informed by broader institutional contexts.
Specifically, the end of the Cold War prompted a reformulation of
security and defence policies in many European states that, given
the domestic institutional orders of member states, was favourable to
their reorientation towards ‘Europe’ in several prominent states prior
to enlargement.

This not only raised a number of defence planning

concerns, but also arms development and procurement issues. The
cost of new, technologically intensive weapons systems, pioneered

70 Securing Europe

by the US as part of the so-called Revolution in Military Affairs
(RMA), meant that European governments could only conceive of
procuring and developing such systems by combining their resources
and developing joint defence programmes.

Institutional adaptation within member states

The construction of ‘rules’ (perceptual schemes and norms) at the
EU level is not only leading to increased authority being ceded to
transnational security practitioners, but is also altering domestic
institutional orders and, therefore, security apparatuses. In other
words, Europeanization as a result of ‘diffusion’ is taking place. This
can be seen by looking at the way in which perceptual schemes and
norms are diffusing to national institutions in terms of policy dis-
course, behaviour, and the allocation of resources. According to the
structurationist framework I set out at the end of Chapter 2, change
occurs when two or more institutional orders intersect. However,
because actors are embedded in domestic institutional orders and
are reflexive, responses will necessarily vary. In other words, in this
process of co-determination of national and regional-level institu-
tional orders, actors will try to order social practices based on their
practical knowledge, or their understanding of how ‘to go about’
things, which will necessarily be variable.

The 2010 Headline Goal, particularly the battle group concept, is

likely to have a significant impact on the reorientation of small- and
medium-sized member states’ force structures. To this end, a type
of European military ‘model’ could be said to be in the process of
being established.

This is a significant development, since military

integration has been a taboo for so long, and because it points to the
modification of an important dimension of the expression of state
sovereignty. National policy discourse and defence and procurement
planning appear to indicate such a development. The latest defence
planning papers of Britain, France, and Germany are, to varying
degrees, informed by the ESS and capabilities development process.
The German 2003 Defence Policy Guidelines are clearly influenced
by the country’s commitment to the ESDP and the ESS. They speak
of the need for ‘prevention and containment of crises and conflicts’.
An out of area dimension is also evident: ‘The necessity of the
Bundeswehr to participate in multinational operations may arise
anywhere in the world at short notice and may extend across the

The European Security and Defence Policy 71

entire mission spectrum down to high-intensity operations’. There is
also a strong commitment to a rule-based global order: ‘The prolif-
eration of mass destruction can only be prevented and contained by
comprehensive non-proliferation policy measures and a regulatory
framework put in place by the international community and shaped
in accordance with transparent rules’. ‘The fight against terrorism is
based upon international law and in particular the Charter of the
United Nations’. ‘According to the Charter of the United Nations,
the UN Security Council has the primary responsibility for maintain-
ing international peace and security’.

In relation to the transformation of its force structure, the Defence

Policy Guidelines state that ‘[c]ompatibility with the build-up of
capabilities under the ESDP will be ensured’. They make specific
reference to the Defence Capabilities Mechanism: ‘The achievement
of European force goals and the elimination of identified capability
deficits at national and European levels, as well as the commitment
of reported military capabilities and means are the yardstick for
the degree to which Germany and its partners are fulfilling their
obligations within the framework of the EU.’ They also mention
that ‘[a] capability-oriented overall approach integrating all the
armed services and areas is being developed for procurement and
equipment planning. Armaments cooperation within a European
and transatlantic framework has to be given precedence over the
realization of projects under national responsibility’. ‘Procurement
and equipment planning will be oriented even more stringently to
a capability-focused, overall approach across all services and organi-
zational areas, coordinated at multinational level.’ On armaments
cooperation, they state that ‘[t]he progress of political integration
in Europe as well as the limited financial leeway enhance both
the necessity and opportunities for greater multinationality ... as a
prerequisite for this ability to cooperate, Germany will maintain an
efficient and competitive industrial base in core areas of technol-
ogy affording it some leverage in the development of key weapons
systems.’

The 2006 White Paper on German Security Policy and

the Future of the Bundeswehr confirms Germany’s continued com-
mitment to engaging multinational military operations and the
accompanying changes this implies to its force structure.

The French 2003–2008 Military Programme Bill of Law, which con-

stitutes the second part of a revision of the French defence apparatus

72 Securing Europe

launched in 1998, is more specific about the precise ways in which it is
intended to support the ESDP and is heavily informed by the Defence
Capabilities Mechanism. It specifically states at the beginning of the
text that it ‘contributes to the achievement of an extremely important
political objective, the construction of European defence, in which
our country must continue to play a major role’. Moreover, it makes
it clear that with the exception of deterrence the decisions taken from
Helsinki to Laeken provide the ‘general lines of the European orienta-
tion of which our defence is a part’. The Military Programme Law is,
therefore, compatible with the efforts to address persistent shortfalls
in areas identified by the ECAP panels, namely command, intelli-
gence and communication, projection and force mobility, deep action
means and the means with which to deploy forces in foreign theatres.’
The outline for improvements in command, intelligence, and com-
munication capacities, moreover, show evidence of being influenced
by the battle groups concept: ‘France will produce a complete chain
of command from strategic level through to tactical level, including
the joint forces theatre (operative) command. ... It will be capable of
acting as “Lead nation” for political-military consulting, planning and
control tools of a wide scale of operation by the European Union.’

In terms of procurement the Military Programme Law foresees that

‘acquisition of certain future capacities will require cooperation at
the European level, in particular for space-based observation, space
telecommunications and drones.’

With regard to intelligence in

the theatre, joint procurement/development is clearly envisaged:
‘capabilities will be improved toward the end of the programme com-
missioning, new airborne sensors … and long endurance and tactical
drones offering the possibility of almost permanent observation of
certain zones. These drones should be a privileged field of action
for European cooperation’.

The ‘logic’ underpinning the need to

encourage the development of a European defence industrial and
technological base is present in the Military Programme Law: ‘com-
pared with the effort undertaken by the United States and the size of
the American industrial groups, only a competitive defence industry
of the European scale will leave European countries with freedom
of choice in their equipment. ... Lastly, the research effort will be
amplified to prepare for the integration of technical changes that will
make it possible to face the new threats effectively.’

The European Security and Defence Policy 73

In the British 2004 Command Paper Delivering Security in a Changing

World: Future Capabilities, the influence of the ESDP is less striking,
largely because British security and defence policy emphasizes the
need to act in coalitions of the willing, most notably alongside the
US.

It does, nevertheless, specifically refer to the need to be able

to support three concurrent small- and medium-size operations,
as opposed to two envisaged in the earlier 1998 Strategic Defence
Review and the update to it, including the capacity to lead or be
a framework nation for European (and other coalition) operations
where the US is not involved.

This is a clear allusion to the battle

group concept. It goes on to state that ‘[f]or some of our assets such
operations have now become the principal driver in determining the
size of force structure needed.’

We should also expect the establishment of EDA to lead to increased

Europeanization of procurement and member states’ defence-industrial
and technological bases. This, along with the establishment of an
EU space policy, has fairly significant implications for the allocation
of resources aimed at research and technology, particularly taken
in conjunction with the Commission’s linkage between economic
growth and the creation of a common technological base. The
report produced by the Group of Personalities in the field of Security
Research stresses the additional commercial benefits of promoting a
common technological base:

Europe has high quality research institutes and a substantial
and diverse industrial base from which to address technology
requirements in the security domain. A significant part this
industrial base specializes in the defence, aeronautic, space and
professional electronics sectors, with capabilities running right
through the supply chain from systems integrators/prime con-
tractors to equipment and component suppliers, including a
large number of innovative small and medium size enterprises,
Europe also has world class expertise in pharmaceuticals, bio-
technology and telecommunications. Each of these sectors is
knowledge-based and enjoys significantly higher productivity
levels than the industrial average for Europe. Targeted research
investment in these areas will therefore not only enhance secu-
rity but also contribute to EU productivity and growth.

74 Securing Europe

Referring to the need for the establishment of a European Security
Research Programme (ESRP), the report argues:

An ESRP developed along these lines is of strong social interest
and can give significant added value. It would help enhance
Europe’s security, which is in itself a precondition of numerous
Community policies (transport, energy, telecommunications,
etc.). It would foster cross-border cooperation, increase European
industrial competitiveness and strengthen Europe’s research base.
What is more, it would contribute significantly to the EU policy
on growth and competitiveness as established in Lisbon and
Barcelona.

In order to gain greater competence within the defence industry
issue, the Commission is framing the issue of capabilities develop-
ment as complementary with defined economic objectives.

The

Commission underlines cost efficiency of defence spending and the
maintenance of a competitive defence and technological industrial
base as important issues when considering EU defence equipment
policy. As more and more operations are undertaken, we might also
expect Europeanization at the strategic and operational level to
increase.

To sum up, then, the late 1990s saw EU member states decide that

the Union required the means with which to play a greater role on
the international stage. This necessarily implied the creation of a com-
mon European security and defence policy as a distinctive part of the
CFSP. Had descriptive accounts of developments in this field or self-
consciously theoretical analyses that draw on realism been employed,
the focus would have been on states rationally pursuing their prefer-
ences and interests at summits. This would, as I pointed out, have
led to an inadequate depiction of the EU governance structure. In
the absence of a supranational state, European cooperation does not
result simply from states rationally pursuing their preferences. As
the capabilities development process demonstrates, fragments of the
state, in this case defence and civilian officials, as well as military
staff, constitute important agents of change with regards to European
military integration, given that many details of broad agreements
get worked out within decentralized networks in between summits.
Their position-practices meant that meeting military capability needs

The European Security and Defence Policy 75

based on defined security threats, operational scenarios and available
resources was their overwhelming concern. Their knowledgeability
was, however, bounded to the extent that a number of political
consequences ensued as a result of their activities that would have
been unlikely to have been intended. In the capabilities development
mechanism, the framing of the issue as an ‘objective need’ has led to
increased authority being ceded to Brussels-based institutions, such
as the EDA. This expansive ‘logic’ was in large part linked to the way
in which the issues were framed. The institutional contexts of practi-
tioners involved in decentralized policy networks ought, therefore, be
considered when attempting to account for progress in this area.

More traditional accounts of the ESDP would also have failed

to capture the connection between different spheres of social life,
specifically the impact of the economic environment on institu-
tionalized cooperation in the field of security. Some analysts have
identified economic factors in their accounts of developments in
the political-military field. They point to the linkage between capa-
bilities improvements and economic growth within the EU, and the
way this is favouring defence industrial cooperation, in addition to
capabilities improvements. Yet what they failed to recognize was
that framing the issue provided the impetus for greater integration.
Law enforcement and police studies are more helpful in this respect.
They emphasize the general shift in the discourse on security within
the context of globalization related to assessments about the state’s
capacity to effectively control its borders. In the case of the EU, the
notion of a ‘permanent security deficit’ was given added emphasis
within the context of the removal of internal controls and instabil-
ity in Eastern Europe. To this extent, it seems possible to say that
those responsible for providing security perceived the state’s security
functions as being in danger without further measures being under-
taken. The importance of the knowledgeability of these actors is thus
pointed to. While this body of literature provides useful insights
in this respect, its focus is obviously on developments in ‘internal’
security.

To some extent, a neo-functionalist approach would have been

helpful in comprehending the relationship between economic and
security questions. In contrast to neo-realist accounts and those
relying on realist assumptions, neo-functionalists were justified in
identifying the central actors as the political elites in participating

76 Securing Europe

countries. However, their pluralist underpinnings would have led
them to emphasize political elites connected to competing groups
within member states. As mentioned earlier, this is partly because
European integration was in its early stages when neo-functionalism
developed. Since then, political integration has advanced into new
and more sensitive areas of state sovereignty and the governance
structure of the EU has altered. It is now possible to identify mid-
level officials engaged in decentralized policy networks as central
actors in the process of integration.

Neo-functionalists have also been sensitive to the way in which

apparently ‘technical’ issues can have an expansive ‘logic’. An
examination of the development of the ESDP suggests that activities
framed in a ‘technical’ or practical manner played an important role
in the constructive dimension of Europeanization. Brussels-based
bodies did see their competencies increase in line with the expan-
sion of a conscious task, as unintended consequences arose from
earlier tasks. This was partly related to the coordination needs at the
EU level. Expectations among defence industrialists, for instance,
also added impetus to integrative efforts in related fields. Indeed,
‘spill-over’ potential, which is used by neo-functionalists to charac-
terize the mechanisms through which regional integration occurs,
cannot simply be characterized as the result of the pursuit of inter-
ests; it greatly depended on the framing of the issue. Moreover, at
a certain point perceptions of the common interest are required to
enable fundamental developments to occur. In relation to the ESDP,
threats to common, European security came to inform the direction
of developments.

Another weakness of neo-functionalist arguments would have

been the assumed gradual increase in supranationalism. While
supranational institutions, such as the Commission, were shown to
have some influence on the capabilities development process, for
example, their role has been fairly limited due to the fact that they
are not subject to Community law and belong to inter-governmental
areas of the EU. Moreover, the governance structure within the EU
does not imply a choice between the nation state and supranation-
alism, as neo-functionalism would suggest. Neo-functionalism is
forced to adhere to this dichotomy because it defines institutions
too narrowly and fails to capture adequately the co-constitutive rela-
tionship between individual action and institutions. Actions driving

The European Security and Defence Policy 77

integration are assumed to be the outcome of individual or group
perceptions of their interest. Essentially, as the process of integration
proceeds, it is assumed that interests will be redefined in terms of
regional, rather than purely national terms. This does, as indicated,
take place. However, the principal actors are mid-level officials rather
than groups. Moreover, rather than the supranational supplant-
ing the ‘national’ level, institutional contexts at the national and
regional level appear to undergo a process of transformation, suggest-
ing the co-determination of national and regional levels.

Transatlantic security relations

Increased military cooperation between EU member states clearly has
implications for transatlantic security relations, notably with regard
to the NATO–EU relationship. Since increased EU autonomy within
the area of crisis management necessarily implies a reduced US capac-
ity to monopolize political decision-making within the transatlantic
security field, the issue has been highly controversial. Realist and some
neo-Marxist accounts of the implications of the ESDP for transatlantic
security relations view European efforts to increase military capabilities
as an instance of balancing behaviour. However, national institutional
orders informing definitions of interests and preferences have been
and are still shaping the politics surrounding the question of greater
EU autonomy within the transatlantic alliance. In this section, I exam-
ine the influence of member states’ institutional contexts on the crea-
tion of the ESDP and its implications for the NATO–EU relationship.
I first look at how the reformulation of security policies and defence
planning, informed by the strategic cultures and collective identities
of member states, facilitated the emergence of the ESDP. I then go on
to examine the manner in which the specific institutional orders of
the key member states are decisive factors shaping influencing issues,
such as operational responsibility in the area of crisis management in
the Euro-Atlantic area, and command and defence planning.

The reformulation of security policies and
defence planning

Changes in the global order following the end of the Cold War
brought about a reformulation of security policies and defence plan-
ning in EU member states. The precise manner in which they were

78 Securing Europe

reformulated greatly depended on the strategic cultures and collec-
tive identities vis-à-vis the European integration process. In France,
these changes necessitated a redefinition of the Gaullist synthesis
that had previously informed French security policy. Attaining gran-
deur and rank through the pursuit of national autonomy, a belief in
French exceptionalism and the universalism of French values, as well
as the value of military force as a tool of state power and prestige in
pursuit of European and global security was rendered anachronistic
with the end of the Cold War. The demise of the East–West stand-
off had effectively eliminated the context in which France could
play the role of a third diplomatic force and called into question
the value of deterrence. Europe, hence, came to be seen as the most
appropriate forum in which France could best exercise its influence
and adjust to the changed international political environment.
Fostering greater Franco-German cooperation within the context
of European integration also, it seems, was regarded as a way of
containing German influence and, at the same time, facilitating the
achievement of stated French national objectives within a European
framework. As John Gaffney notes, ‘French influence in Europe has
been historically based upon and almost completely fashioned by, its
relationship to and proximity to Germany.’

During the Cold War, France’s independent nuclear capability – force

de frappe – was viewed as an essential tool in the pursuit of national
autonomy and influence. With the end of the East–West arms race,
the possession of nuclear weapons no longer served France in the
pursuit of these ideals. Moreover, the paramount importance that had
been placed on French nuclear independence was further challenged
by security threats, such as civil and ethnic wars, terrorism, and weap-
ons proliferation, that appeared to require a different set of military
capabilities. The wars in the former Yugoslavia and the first Gulf War
made French security practitioners particularly aware of France’s need
to restructure its force base in order to be able to engage in crisis
management and, moreover, to make this a cornerstone of a common
European security policy under French leadership.

The wars also made it apparent that Europe needed, at least for

the time being, to keep the US engaged in light of Europe’s lack of
military capabilities with which to respond to crises. This change in
thinking set the stage for the new flexibility in the Franco-US/NATO
relationship that emerged in the early- and mid-1990s, and played

The European Security and Defence Policy 79

a key role in the acceptance of the CJTFs framework within NATO.
Yet, frustrated with their attempts to restructure NATO from within,
French policymakers soon shifted their focus away from the WEU
and CJTFs as the appropriate means to strengthen the ‘European pil-
lar of defence’ and towards the EU. In 1998, when the WEU Brussels
treaty was due to expire, the French took the opportunity to initiate
a debate on the future of the organization. In the summer of that
year, Jacques Chirac publicly suggested that the WEU’s functions
be absorbed by the EU. This move coincided with the policy turn
around in the UK.

While UK governments have traditionally supported strengthen-

ing the European pillar of the transatlantic alliance, the St Malo
Declaration marked a turning point in the official British position
vis-à-vis the development of a European pillar of defence in that
it posited the need for the EU to develop the capacity for autono-
mous action within a EU framework and to develop the appropriate
structures in support of this objective.

Prior to the Anglo-French

declaration, Britain had staunchly supported the American-inspired
ESDI within NATO. However, rather than representing a fundamental
re-assessment of the centrality of the transatlantic alliance in foreign
and security policy thinking, ‘Europe’ came to be viewed as an appro-
priate context in which to improve European capabilities, as well as to
safeguard the long-term health of the Alliance. As Alister Miskimmon
observes, ‘Strategic culture has not remained static in the British case,
but has gone through a process of incremental change to meet new
challenges and new circumstances. British strategic culture, especially
since 1945, has also emerged from a series of often conflicting pres-
sures which British policy makers have had to balance – namely, the
pull of Europeanist and Atlanticist visions of security and defense
policy, coupled with the incremental reconceptualization of the role
of the armed forces in British foreign policy.’

Against expectations, the WEU had failed to develop significant

political will to develop Europe’s operational capabilities. According
to one British official, key policy figures within the Ministry of
Defence (MoD) were pushing for a change in the status quo.

This

movement for change intersected with concerns within the Foreign
and Commonwealth Office (FCO). The majority view within the
FCO was that in order to keep the US engaged in Europe, Britain
had to play a bridging role between its European allies and the US.

80 Securing Europe

This implied, on the one hand, persuading European allies to build
up their own military capabilities in order to achieve a more equal
partnership within the Alliance and, on the other hand, commu-
nicating to Americans that greater European capabilities need not
imply a threat to the NATO.

Developing the capabilities for ‘autonomous action’ appears in

no way to have been equated with duplicating NATO assets in order
to carry out EU-only operations. As Miskimmon observes, ‘[t]he
dramatic loss of relative power which UK suffered as a result of the
costs of fighting two world wars within a 30 year period, necessitated
a foreign policy in which the UK sought to punch above its own
weight.’

Britain’s intimate relationship with the US has enabled

it to retain some degree of its rank as a major power with global
interests. Britain enjoys privileged access to American space-based
capabilities, which are essential in creating ‘strategic effects’

and for

projecting force far afield – both of which are regarded as crucial for
responding to security threats at their point of origin – an objective
specified in the 2003 Defence White Paper, Delivering Security in a
Changed World.

This means that policymakers in the MoD, as well

as those in the Treasury, are generally opposed to duplicating these
capabilities through joint programmes with other European states.
Their reluctance is matched by FCO concerns about the political
ramifications of such duplication, since the US is not eager to see
Europe develop space-based technology for commercial reasons.

Taking a lead role in the area of military crisis management also

seems to have been perceived as serving the need to boost Britain’s
role in the EU following its decision not to join the European
Monetary Union (EMU). British policymakers had not anticipated
the impact that Britain’s non-accession would have on its influence.
Despite efforts to get Britain included in the institutional structures
overseeing the Euro, British officials were only allowed to participate
as observers. Having been rebuffed in this field, another area in which
Britain could retain its influence and play a leadership role in Europe
had to be found.

As one of the few EU member states capable of

projecting military power beyond Europe’s borders, demonstrating
leadership in the field of security and defence provided the Blair
government with an opportunity to play a greater role in European
affairs. Other than Britain, only France was considered a ‘serious’
military power, used to acting globally and with a high threshold for

The European Security and Defence Policy 81

casualties. However, French reforms to force structure were less com-
plete than those of Britain and, perhaps more significantly, France’s
non-membership of NATO’s integrated military structure and its
awkward relationship with the US gave Britain an advantage in terms
of reassuring the US that NATO would not be undermined by an EU
framework for increased military capabilities.

Much as in the French case, the changed global environment

prompted an adaptation of Germany’s security policy. Germany’s
Cold War situation saw its security policy heavily bound to the US/
NATO’s strategic priorities and the constutionalization of the notion
of Selbstbindung (self-restraint). For almost half a century, Germany’s
security policy was heavily circumscribed by East–West antagonism,
‘rehabilitation’ through the pooling of its sovereignty and a prefer-
ence for non-military solutions to security problems. The demise
of East–West confrontation, the re-unification of Germany and the
new understanding of the use of military force in a globalizing world
helped to initiate the reshaping of the contours of German security
policy. The perception of Germany as a fully sovereign partner of the
US and a heavyweight in Europe set off a domestic debate about the
country’s role as a security actor.

Enhancing Germany’s role in the context of the redefinition

of threats to security and NATO’s reinvention inevitably led to a
debate over the need to change Germany’s constitution to enable
participation in NATO’s military operations. For the best part of four
decades, the role of the German Federal Army was shaped by the
strategic calculations of the Cold War and the concerns of Germany’s
European Allies: the Federal Army was itself created in 1955 when
the US became convinced that a German land force contribution
to NATO was necessary in order to deter Soviet conventional forces;
it was subsequently commanded by NATO’s Commander in Chief
Allied Forces Central Europe (CINCENT);

and the circumstances

under which it could be employed abroad were confined to the self-
defence within the Alliance context. As NATO broadened its mission
in the early 1990s to enable it to undertake multiple and wide-ranging
operations, including peacekeeping,

Germany’s membership in the

Alliance impelled policymakers to reconsider the circumstances under
which military force should be projected. After a fractious internal
debate following US criticism of Germany’s refusal to participate
in direct military action during the 1991 Gulf War, the German

82 Securing Europe

Constitutional Court ruled in 1994 that Germany could participate
in military operations within the framework of a collective security
system – for example, as a member of NATO, the WEU or the EU.

Despite the lack of firm consensus about the country’s role, there is
an overriding desire to be an active partner in NATO and to assume
what many in Germany consider to be the country’s responsibilities.
This, at least some of the time, seems to imply a readiness to get
involved in international military operations.

A certain degree of continuity in the close German–US/NATO

relationship thus continues in the post-Cold War period. Awareness
of the need to keep the US engaged as a ‘European power’ was even
more keenly felt in Germany, as a consequence of its immediate bor-
ders with former Soviet Eastern European satellites. Germany was,
therefore, a prime mover behind NATO’s 1990 London Declaration,
which aimed at greater cooperation between NATO and Central
and Eastern European countries. The scope of the Declaration was
expanded by former US Secretary of State James Baker and former
German Foreign Minister Hans-Dietrich Genscher in 1991 when they
presented their vision of a Euro-Atlantic Community stretching from
Vancouver to Vladivostok and further gave greater form to the North
Atlantic Cooperation Council (NACC) during NATO’s Rome Summit
in November 1991.

While German policymakers wished to maintain US involvement

in Europe and supported NATO’s redefinition, there was also a gen-
eral consensus among the German political elite that Europe needed
to work towards a genuine European security and defence capabil-
ity as part of progress towards greater political union. Accordingly,
German policymakers played a key role during the negotiations of
the TEU, advocating a Political Union and a CESDP. They also played
an important role in negotiating the link between the EU/CFSP and
the WEU. From the German perspective, the WEU was the pivot
upon which to strengthen the CFSP through a European security and
defence policy, as well as to Europeanize NATO. Therefore, Germany
supported both the Petersberg Declaration of 1992, which aimed at
strengthening the WEU by endowing it with competencies in the
sphere of crisis management, and NATO’s ESDI/CJTFs initiative.

When the time came to negotiate the 1997 Amsterdam Treaty,

Germany pushed hard for more concrete provisions for the develop-
ment of a European security and defence policy. At the IGC in June

The European Security and Defence Policy 83

1997, which led to the Treaty, Germany proposed, inter alia, incorpo-
rating the Petersberg tasks into the EU and inserting a timetable in the
Treaty for the integration of the WEU into the EU. Alongside these
proposals, the German Ministry of Foreign Affairs produced their
vision of a three-phased model in which cooperation between the EU
and the WEU would first be enhanced, then the WEU’s activities and
structures would be transferred to the EU and, finally, the Article 5
commitments of the WEU would be included in the revised TEU. The
rationale behind these proposals was, on the one hand, the inclusion
of common defence in the EU, the development of crisis manage-
ment capabilities and the creation of a second, European Pillar of
Defence within the framework of NATO.

At the same time as security policies were being reformulated,

reductions in defence spending following the end of the Cold War
meant that defence ministries tended to warm to regional integration
as a means of reducing costs and saving commitments from finance
ministry attacks.

The end of the Cold War had also led to the

restructuring of defence industries and the end of defence companies’
exception with regard to internationalization. The perceived need to
adapt to global market forces has led to large-scale concentration and
rationalization, as European firms seek to compete with their rivals in
the US.

As a result of the changing defence industrial landscape and

their desire to see capabilities in Europe improve, French and German
policymakers, in particular, have been keen to promote common
procurement and to reduce the amount of regulatory frameworks
within which European defence firms must operate – in other words,
to create a European defence industrial base. Britain’s defence indus-
trial linkages and special relationship with the US, which involves
collaboration on weapons programmes – both nuclear and conven-
tional – make its policymakers supportive of increased coordination,
but extremely weary of politicizing the joint armaments organization
in any way that might lead to the creation of a common European
defence industrial base.

Operational responsibility

Operational responsibility for missions is currently governed by the
so-called Berlin-Plus arrangement, which allows the EU access to
NATO military assets when NATO as a whole does not wish to act.
This means that NATO has the right to decline involvement in a

84 Securing Europe

mission before the EU can decide to get involved. This arrangement
is the result of a considerable degree of compromise between both
EU and NATO member states. This agreement has been crucial in
making the ESDP viable and reassuring the US. In effect, it gives the
US a de facto veto over EU operations, so long as the EU is depend-
ent on NATO/US military capabilities. Gaining greater political
autonomy within the transatlantic alliance is thus dependent on
developing autonomous military capabilities and support elements.
The official positions of Britain, France, and Germany, respectively,
reflect the different and prevailing preferences in each state regard-
ing the role of the EU and the corresponding degree of autonomy it
should have in relation to NATO, which are linked to perceptions of
US leadership within the transatlantic security arena.

Britain tends to share the US view of operational responsibility,

namely that NATO should have the right to decline intervention
in a conflict before the EU can decide to act. This leads to two pos-
sibilities for operational responsibility: either NATO or the EU with
NATO assets.

From the viewpoint of many British policymakers,

the political and monetary cost of duplicating expensive assets and
capabilities – something that EU-only missions could ultimately
imply – is simply unwarranted.

The French, by contrast, take a rather different view. While the

positive experience of operational involvement with NATO on the
ground has brought the French military around to further rap-
prochement with NATO, most within the French establishment
share a general preference for the ESDP,

because of the limita-

tions of gaining greater autonomy within the NATO framework.
This is particularly the case in the French Foreign Ministry, where
the Gaullist tradition is particularly strong, as well as in the Elysée
Palace. Indeed, both Chirac and French foreign ministry officials are
the most active in promoting the development of the ESDP. In line
with their desire to see a European Pillar of Defence equal that of
a ‘North American Pillar of Defence’, the French were initially dis-
satisfied with the Berlin-Plus arrangement. They feared that the EU
would be regarded by the US as a ‘sub-contractor’ to NATO. While
the French conceded to pressure from other EU member states to
accept the arrangement, the French persist in their efforts to under-
mine the US monopoly on political decision-making within the
Euro-Atlantic security arena by emphasizing that the EU will mostly

The European Security and Defence Policy 85

act on its own – the effective veto wielded by non-EU NATO mem-
ber states as a result of the EU’s dependence on NATO assets would
clearly be avoided if the EU were carrying out operations using its
own capabilities and infrastructure.

Nevertheless, the French also

accept that Europeans may have to call on NATO assets and infra-
structure for ‘high-end’ missions.

The differences in emphasis that exist between Britain and France

with regards to ESDP operations reflects their different approaches to
the purpose of the project and the weight the EU should carry rela-
tive to NATO and the US within the Euro-Atlantic order. As Medcalf
notes, the French view the ESDP, above all, as a European project
that involves, under some circumstances, making use of NATO. The
British, by contrast, see it as the best means for safeguarding the
Alliance, which will increasingly involve making use of a European
instrument for tasks the US would rather not undertake as it focuses
its efforts on the Middle East and Asia. Germany, for its part, tends to
give equal weight to both the ESDI and the ESDP and regards them
as entirely complementary projects.

Accordingly, it has always

stressed that the ESDP is not intended to undermine NATO, but to
complement it. The Berlin-Plus agreement is viewed as buttressing
the EU–NATO relationship. If importance is attached to European-
only missions, it is not done so with a view to undermining the US
as a ‘European’ power.

Preferences related to the capabilities required for ‘autonomous’

action reflect these various dispositions. From the French perspective,
eroding the US monopoly on political decision-making is depend-
ent on the EU’s ability to reduce its reliance on NATO capacities.
Accordingly, French initiatives and diplomatic manoeuvres have
been conceived with this in mind. One year after issuing the St
Malo Declaration, Chirac presented France’s EU partners with an
Action Plan that envisaged an EU, able to act autonomously, even in
the absence of US consent, and the development of a fully-fledged
European chain of command, full multilateralization of existing
French and British Permanent Joint Headquarters (PJHQs), autono-
mous intelligence, power projection and C

capabilities, and the

establishment of a technological and industrial base.

France has

been able to find some common ground with Germany on a number
of these issues, while Britain, predictably, has been lukewarm about
what its policymakers view as unnecessary duplication.

86 Securing Europe

Command and defence planning

In the aftermath of the Anglo-American-led war against Iraq, the
French, along with the Germans, actively pursued the idea of an
independent EU command and planning cell. Together, they pro-
posed the creation of an independent military headquarters in
Turveren, near Brussels, Belgium. Not unsurprisingly, this proposal
caused intense concern in Washington because of the greater auton-
omy it implied for the EU. Unease in the Pentagon was further inten-
sified because of the timing of the initiative: the idea surfaced when
Tony Blair was trying to repair relations with France and Germany
following their falling out over the war in Iraq and shortly after a tri-
partite summit in Berlin in September 2003 between Blair, Schröder
and Chirac.

Washington feared that some kind of deal on greater

military cooperation had been made by the three statesmen. The US
reacted vigorously – the US ambassador to NATO, Nicholas Burns, is
on record as claiming that the Franco-German proposal represented
‘one of the greatest dangers to the transatlantic relationship’ – calling
an extraordinary meeting in NATO the following month to challenge
the initiative.

While the idea of an independent headquarters at Turveren has

been buried, due to lack of Anglo-American support, a compromise
deal was reached. At a meeting in Naples in November 2003, EU for-
eign ministers agreed to the creation of a small independent military
planning cell in the EUMS for EU missions independent of NATO and
an EU planning cell in SHAPE to be employed for missions under-
taken with NATO or with recourse to NATO assets.

Britain, which

was in favour of the idea of an EU presence at SHAPE, was clearly key
in negotiating the compromise. Indeed, according to one British offi-
cial, Britain worked closely with the US on its negotiating position.
The compromise solution was also likely to have been facilitated by
Germany’s flexibility on the issue. Germany, apparently, was also in
favour of an EU presence at SHAPE

and most likely supported the

French position out of gratitude for France’s solidarity in opposition
to the war in Iraq.

The rift created by divergent positions on the War in Iraq between

European countries, as well as that within the transatlantic alliance,
in effect created an impetus for greater European cooperation in the
area of security and defence, partly as a result of the German secu-
rity practitioners’ opposition to the War and the difficulties Britain

The European Security and Defence Policy 87

experienced in Europe as a result of its support for Washington. The
Turveren plan was but one element of proposed measures for deeper
cooperation in the security and defence fields. At the Brussels sum-
mit France, Germany, and Belgium also called for greater cooperation
among those EU member states ready to form a ‘core’ Europe in the
area of security and defence. In light of Britain’s bid for leadership in
this area, Blair had little choice but to cross some of his previous ‘red
lines’, given the objective of balancing Atlanticist and Europeanist
visions of security. According to a number of diplomats in Brussels,
the feeling in Whitehall and the Cabinet was that Britain had to
make a greater effort to play a constructive role in Europe.

To sum up, then, the strategic cultures and collective identities in

relation to the European integration process in key member states
were crucial in bringing about the creation of an EU crisis man-
agement capacity. While seeking greater autonomy from the US
was clearly a central motivation to launch the ESDP within an EU
framework and the politics surrounding the question of how much
autonomy the EU should have, the ESDP is not best understood as
the result of balancing behaviour by EU member states. Relying on
realist assumptions would not have captured the role that the inter-
play of national institutional orders of key EU member states, par-
ticularly perceptions of US leadership and EU integration, played in
the emergence of the formation of this policy. While the War in Iraq
exposed divergent institutional orders within Europe, it also appears
to have rather ironically boosted EU military planning capabilities as
a result of the imbalance it created for the UK government’s ‘balanc-
ing act’, as well as the way in which the Anglo-American use of force
without a UN mandate clashed with German security values.

Conclusion

A review of the capabilities-development process and associated
developments, such as the establishment of EDA, illustrates that the
ESDP is not simply leading to a Europeanization of national security
policies and defence planning, but is likely to gradually involve the
increased Europeanization of procurement, as well as defence force
structures, and is likely to encourage the Europeanization of member
states’ defence industrial and technological bases. Accounts of the
ESDP that rely on the traditional terms of IR theorizing would have

88 Securing Europe

suggested that increased policy coordination was the result of states
rationally pursing their interests at summits. The principal mode of
Europeanization in this area has been horizontal, since interaction
is mainly guided by soft law. Due to the technicalities of some the
issues, it has been impossible to direct this work in any detail from the
political level, which means that the direction of the ESDP has been
guided less by a series of periodic summits than by a fairly decentral-
ized framework for coordination. In this policy network, mid-level
officials and military representatives play an important role in the
transformation of state sovereignty as expressed in the deployment
of the military. The development of the EDA, which represents an
effort to construct a more formalized system of regulation by support-
ing member states in their development of capabilities for Petersberg
tasks and encouraging closer defence industrial cooperation will,
moreover, give Brussels-based officials, armaments and research direc-
tors, as well as perhaps representatives from the defence industry, a
greater role in the capabilities-development mechanism, suggesting
an increasingly decentralized governance structure, as well as the rise
in influence of defence industrial and economic growth issues.

The role of practitioners in the process of Europeanization is

intimately linked to their knowledgeability. In the initial phase of
the capabilities process, the ‘problem’ was framed in ‘technical’
terms, with the emphasis being placed on ‘filling a capabilities gap’.
Framing the issue in this way initiated a type of expansive ‘logic’, as
a number of other factors appeared relevant to fulfilling this ‘objec-
tive need’, and greater direction at the EU-level seemed necessary.
To some extent this would seem to validate neo-functionalism’s
concept of spillover. Neo-functionalism would not, however, have
given sufficient weight to the way in which the interests leading to
such spillover are dependent on practitioners’ specific institutional
contexts. Moreover, the fact that the second phase of the capabilities
improvement process – the 2010 Headline Goal – is largely informed
by the ESS signifies that a sense of the ‘common good’ or, in other
words, an EU security identity is beginning to make its way into the
capabilities-improvement process.

Neo-functionalism would also have led us to expect a gradual

increase in supranationalism. Yet while supranational institutions,
such as the Commission, were shown to have some influence on the
capabilities-development process, for example, their role has been

The European Security and Defence Policy 89

quite limited due to the absence of Community law in this field.
Moreover, the governance structure within the EU does not imply
a choice between the nation state and supranationalism, as neo-
functionalism would imply. Neo-functionalism is obliged to stick
to this dichotomy because it defines institutions too narrowly and
fails to capture adequately the co-determining relationship between
individual actions and institutions. Actions driving integration are
assumed to be the outcome of individual or group perceptions of
their interest. Essentially, as the process of integration proceeds, it is
assumed that interests will be redefined in terms of regional, rather
than purely national terms. This does, as shown, take place. Yet
the principal actors are mid-level officials rather than groups, and
a transfer of loyalty toward regional-level authorities from national
governments is not necessarily required; instead, both institutional
contexts at the national and regional level are transformed, pointing
to the co-determination of national and regional levels. The emer-
gence of ‘rules’ within the EU-level policy framework is helping to
modify institutional practices in member states. The fact that it is
increasingly guiding EU member states’ policies, practices, and the
deployment of resources suggests the emergence of an ‘EU model’ in
relation to force structures. The ESS is also increasingly likely to guide
domestic policy linked to research and technology.

Once the ESDP was established, facilitated cooperation played an

important role in altering policies, defence planning, and procure-
ment, as well as force structures, a number of other factors linked to
the broader economic and political environment clearly influenced
security practitioners’ security policy thinking. The end of the Cold
War prompted a reformulation of security policies in EU member
states that was favourable to their reorientation towards ‘Europe’.
This raised a number of defence planning, as well as arms develop-
ment and procurement issues, given the specificities of the institu-
tional orders guiding policymakers in key EU member states. The
shared commitment to establishing the capabilities with which to
back up EU crisis management was, however, tempered by the cost
of new weapons systems. EU governments could only conceive of
procuring and developing such systems by combining their resources
and developing joint programmes.

While geo-strategic calculations form part of the purposive behav-

iour of member state security practitioners in relation to the ESDP,

Justice and Home Affairs
Post-September 11

Introduction

The sense of being engaged in a new kind of war pervades a great
deal of thinking post-September 11. The qualitatively new feature of
the struggle implied by the ‘War on Terrorism’ is attributed, on the
one hand, to its asymmetry, insofar as it involves non-state actors,
and to the scale of destruction the adversary is willing to inflict
on civilian targets – interpreted as an affront to liberal democratic
values – on the other. The belief that something fundamental has
changed in terms of the type of conflicts states could find themselves
engaged in today, and the sense that the ‘War on Terror’ epitomizes
this new kind of vulnerability, has led to a series of measures aimed
at reducing this perceived ‘security deficit’. Despite the current sense
of exceptionalism associated with ‘9/11’, the Madrid bombings in
2004 and the London attacks in 2005, international terrorism is
not new to the security policy agenda in Europe. In fact, it has been
an issue of concern for some 30 years. Over the last three decades,
however, its potency as a challenge to stability and security capable
of inducing greater intra-European cooperation waned with its inclu-
sion in a continuum of externalized (though traditionally conceived
as) internal threats to security. Emphasizing the transnational, the
foreign element of threats to ‘internal’ security has permitted a series
of measures that further reinforce the security dimension of both
member states’ state–citizen relations and the EU’s area of ‘freedom,
justice and security’ (AFJS) and, ultimately, modify state sovereignty
as expressed in the production of public order.

92 Securing Europe

Accounts of these developments that rely on traditional IR theoriz-

ing would not have been able to account for growing institutionaliza-
tion of cooperation in the field of JHA over the last 20 years. Firstly,
they would not have ‘seen’ the creation of a European ‘internal’
security domain, since the focus would have been on military threats
to security in the external realm of inter-state relations. Secondly,
emphasis on the centrality of the state would have led to the conclu-
sion that cooperation between states is the result of states rationally
pursuing their preferences, when the principal actors behind the
process of Europeanization in this area were representatives from inte-
rior ministries and police forces, brought together in informal policy
networks in between moments of treaty reform. Examination of the
development of the JHA field also indicates that common conceptual
schemes and norms developed by transnational policy practitioners
were vital to the institutionalization of cooperation in this area, since
the focus would have been on cultural practices and norms unique
to the international system. This suggests that accounts of develop-
ments in the area of European security that have attempted to rec-
ognize normative and cultural aspects by drawing on regime theory
would also have been inadequate.

The importance of practitioners’ knowledgeability is, however,

reflected in law enforcement and police studies that focus on
the institutionalization of JHA. Informal and decentralized policy
arenas, established in response to the removal of internal border
controls within the Schengen area, were thought to provide policy
practitioners with opportunities to pursue their own agendas, which
were essentially concerned with law enforcement. These analyses,
moreover, suggest that their knowledgeability is bounded in that a
number of the political consequences ensuing from their activities
are unlikely to have been intended. Increased authority being ceded
to Brussels-based institutions, such as EUROPOL, and its expansive
‘logic’ were linked to the way in which the issues were framed. The
institutions that were crucial to this phase included informal ‘rules’,
both cognitive templates and norms.

Neo-functionalism would also have been more able to ‘see’ that

political elites involved in decentralized policy networks are important
actors in the integration process, even if it would not have captured
the role of mid-level practitioners in Brussels-based policy networks,
largely due to the period in which neo-functionalism developed

Justice and Home Affairs Post-September 11 93

(see the discussion of neo-functionalism in Chapter 2). It would also
have provided a more adequate framework of analysis insofar as it
also recognized that ‘technical’ issues can have an expansive ‘logic’.
What it would have failed to show, however, was that the framing of
issues was essential to ‘spill-over’ and to the constructive dimension
of Europeanization. Transfer of loyalty to regional organizations on
the basis of calculations of interests would not have captured the role
that perceptions of the ‘common good’ came to play in the develop-
ment of JHA, as well as the variations in national responses to ‘rules’
established at the EU level.

In this chapter I explore, in particular, how measures taken in the

name of the ‘War on Terror’ are encouraging the further extension of
the European ‘internal’ security field and, thereby, the Europeanization
of the related functions of EU member states. I also examine the impli-
cations of this process for transatlantic security relations. I first begin
by outlining how the externalization of challenges to ‘internal’ security
has gradually legitimized the EU’s role in the area of JHA. Secondly,
I show how the integration process in this policy area has been largely
driven by practitioners in informal policy networks, rather than by
inter-state bargains negotiated on the basis of pre-defined interests and
identities. I then look at the specific knowledgeability of these actors
and the common understanding of ‘problems’ that they have estab-
lished. I then show how this knowledgeability is bounded by demon-
strating that some of the consequences of actors’ practices are unlikely
to have been intended. Thirdly, I consider the implications of measures
underway to increasingly formalize the regulation of this process for the
re-organization and Europeanization of member states’ internal secu-
rity apparatuses prior to September 11. I focus in particular on how the
co-determination of national and EU institutional orders takes place as
common ‘rules’ are established by practitioners within the JHA policy
framework affect the domestic institutional orders of member states.
I then discuss the impact of the September 11 attacks and the ensuing
measures taken in the fight against terrorism on Europeanization of
‘internal’ security and EU–US cooperation in this area.

Europeanization of ‘Internal’ security prior to 9/11

Accounts of post-Cold War developments in the area of European
security that draw on the assumptions of traditional IR theorizing

94 Securing Europe

would have led us to conclude that the EU’s burgeoning field of JHA
is the result of the rational pursuit of the pre-defined interests of EU
member states. While it is true that JHA is an intergovernmental pol-
icy arena, employing a structurationist framework reveals an array of
actors other than states that are vital to progress in the area of ‘inter-
nal’ European security. European cooperation within this area, in fact,
got underway within the context of ‘Euro-terrorism’ in the 1970s.
The international and, in some cases, transnational dimensions of
terrorist incidents tended to frustrate attempts to successfully counter
terrorist campaigns and, consequently, became emphasized in both
policy and operational circles.

In addition to national legislation

enabling more intrusive and aggressive policing in the field of anti-
terrorism,

police reform led to the creation of special, paramilitary-

type, anti-terrorist response units. According to John Benyon, the
professionalization of policing and the accompanying emergence
of specialist units helped to bring about the growth of informal
networks and groups.

These tactical response groups were at the

forefront of early, informal cooperation in the operational field.

Benyon argues that specialist-practitioner demands essentially pro-
vide momentum for cooperative networks and initiatives. Tougher
legislation implying police reform was indeed accompanied by efforts
to improve intra-European police and judicial cooperation. Informal
arrangements were established to facilitate contacts between mem-
ber states. On the basis of an Anglo-Dutch initiative, the 1975 Rome
European Council decided to set up an informal, intergovernmental
coordinating network – TREVI (Terrorism, Radicalism, Extremism, and
International Violence) Group – to facilitate counter-terrorist coop-
eration among the (then) EC member states’ interior ministries.

This

network reflected the political sensitivity of cooperation in the area
of internal security that prevailed at the time, insofar as it was created
outside the Community legal framework as an informal forum for
the discussion of anti-terrorist cooperation, rather than high-profile
cooperation enshrined in treaty.

The system operated at three levels.

It comprised a Ministerial Group of ministers of justice and ministers
of the interior brought together to discuss matters coming within
their competence in the regard of law and order; a Group of Senior
Officials, composed of police chiefs tasked with preparing the agenda
and reports, as well as monitoring the progress of working groups;

Justice and Home Affairs Post-September 11 95

and a series of Working Groups.

Commission officials did not take

part in these discussions until 1987 and, even now, their participa-
tion is limited.

A number of operational groups were also important in developing

practical measures undertaken in the area of internal security. One
example is the

Police Working Group on Terrorism (PWGOT), which

was created in 1979 to fill the perceived gap on the operational side
of police cooperation. PWGOT sought to promote closer working
relations between member states’ police forces in relation to anti-
terrorism, promoting the exchange of intelligence, the secondment
of officers to different countries, and the organization of specialist
seminars.

It thus constituted an important point of contact between

individual police officers. It also established provisions for the rapid
deployment of liaison officers to the scene of terrorist incidents in
other participating states, as happened in the case of the 1988 bomb-
ing of the Pan Am flight 101 over Lockerbie, Scotland.

Other exam-

ples include the Cross-Channel Intelligence Conference, comprising
Kent County Constabulary, France, Belgium, and regional police forces
in The Netherlands, and NEBEDACPOL, a longstanding cooperative
arrangement between chiefs of police in The Netherlands, Belgium
and Germany, as well as cooperation between all Scandinavian states
that belong to the Nordic Union, the Kilowatt group and the so-called
Club of Bern.

The fact that TREVI and PWGOT were informal, ad hoc arrange-

ments reflected legal and political differences between member
states, principally with regards to approaches to anti-terrorism.
French authorities, for example, were at the time often unwilling to
cooperate with their neighbours in extraditing terrorist suspects, in
denying political asylum for suspected perpetrators, and exchang-
ing information, particularly concerning incidents connected to the
Palestinian–Israeli conflict. Successive Bonn governments were also
reluctant to act against the originators of extraterritorial terrorist acts
linked with conflict in the Middle East or to disrupt relations with
states that openly supported or sponsored ‘terrorist’ activities. In
addition to these essentially political considerations, representatives
of the state have been wary of increased judicial cooperation, because
of the legitimating role judiciaries play in state–citizen relations and
their resulting significance for statehood.

It is also unlikely that

96 Securing Europe

formalized intra-European cooperation in the intelligence domain
would have been met with enthusiasm by those working in the area
of human intelligence. The fear that informants and intelligence
sources will be compromised is compounded by the lack of trust and
perhaps existing working relations between some agencies, as well
as professional rivalries. Reservations about the inclusion of sensi-
tive anti-terrorist intelligence within EUROPOL’s ambit, for exam-
ple, have been particularly pronounced in Britain, where the fear is
that the intelligence will be ‘compromised (or even destroyed) by
“untrustworthy” police officers from certain EU states.’

Informal though they were, these networks brought together police

and intelligence chiefs dealing with anti-terrorism and facilitated the
day-to-day liaison activities of national police and counter-intelligence
coordinating bureaus. This enabled trusted personal relations to grow.
This is, however, not the only way in which informal policy networks
are an important dimension of the European integration process. As
Didier Bigo points out, different lines of reasoning have been brought
closer together, leading, despite diverging official ‘national’ positions
and many internal controversies, to agreement and the adoption of
texts.

The evolution of the TREVI Group demonstrates how the

knowledgeability of practitioners was important in driving forward
integration in the area of law enforcement in the late 1980s and begin-
ning of the 1990s.

While the initial focus of TREVI was on anti-terrorist operations

and disturbances to public order,

the network’s remit expanded to

include two additional areas of activity during the mid-to-late 1980s.
In 1985, a third working group, concerned with strategies for coordi-
nating action against serious international organized crime, especially
drug-trafficking, was established. This was followed four years later
by the creation of a fourth working group, known as TREVI 92, which
focused on issues related to the freedom of movement of persons and
compensatory measures to combat the relaxation of intra-European
border controls,

something that was being negotiated at the time

in the context of the SEA. In addition to the Working Groups, four
ad hoc groups were established to promote cooperation in related
areas. The Ad Hoc Working Group on EUROPOL was established in
1991 to work on the idea of a European Criminal Police Office. Its
mandate, however, became less ambitious and it was agreed that it
should focus initially on the creation of a European Drugs Unit. The

Justice and Home Affairs Post-September 11 97

other three ad hoc groups – the Working Group on International
Organised Crime, set up in 1992, the Ad Hoc Group on Immigration,
established in 1986, and the Judicial Cooperation Working Group
on Criminal Matters – were not formally integrated into the TREVI
structure. The Ad Hoc Group on Immigration nevertheless assisted
in drafting the Dublin Convention on Asylum and the Convention
on External Borders and was involved in setting up two centres
tasked with monitoring immigration flows, asylum applications,
forged documents, illegal immigration and related issues, and pro-
moting the exchange of information and intelligence. The Judicial
Co-operation Working Group on Criminal Matters provided a forum
for the discussion of extradition, legislation against terrorist funding
and fraud, and the mutual recognition of court decisions.

What is particularly interesting in the evolution of TREVI from the

point of view of this study is the change in the rhetorical justification
for increased police cooperation reflected in the extended focus of
TREVI. The focus shifted from terrorism to a whole series of phenom-
ena, such as organized crime, the financing of terrorism, clandestine
immigration networks, and the mafia – issues that were initially
treated separately, but came to be more often than not treated
together under the all-encompassing concept of ‘transnational
threats to internal security.’

As Bigo notes, ‘[b]y breaking down cer-

tain boundaries between issues, they changed ways of thinking and
approaches to immigration and asylum rights, unaware that they
were engaged in a philosophical experience. Thus, the issue was no
longer, on the one hand, terrorism, drugs, crime, and on the other,
rights of asylum and clandestine immigration, but they came to be
treated together in the attempt to gain an overall view of the inter-
relation between these problems and the free movement of persons
within Europe.’

Essentially, practitioners participating in informal

networks were developing common ways of conceiving of the conse-
quences of removing internal borders and appropriate measures to be
taken in response to this. Bigo stresses, however, that the creation of
a ‘security continuum’ and the adoption of new rules and procedures
in the area of ‘internal’ security was carried out by agents who were
not fully aware of the consequences of their activities, but were fully
aware of the stakes involved for them. In other words, while they
were acting in accordance with their roles and frames of references,
they were perhaps unaware that they were laying the foundations for

98 Securing Europe

later cooperation through the ‘rules’ they were elaborating.

Insofar

as this was the case, they possessed a bounded knowledge of their
environment.

In fact, the shared understanding and measures developed within

TREVI were formalized in the Schengen arrangement, which was
also originally agreed outside a formal EC legal framework, due
to opposition within Britain to granting it a treaty base. In 1985,
France, Germany, and the Benelux countries signed an agreement to
remove controls at internal borders between participating member
states. The 1990 Schengen Convention implemented and elaborated
on the earlier agreement. The agreement was concerned with goods
and services, and dealt with short-term ways of compensating for the
relaxation of internal borders. As in the case of TREVI, the Schengen
structure also operates at three levels. Overall supervision is provided
by the Executive Committee of ministers. At the mid-level, the Central
Group oversees the implementation of the Executive Committee’s
decisions and supervises a number of working groups, focusing on
police and security, free movement of people, judicial cooperation
and external relations, with sub-groups working on a range of issues,
such as asylum matters, visas, firearms, drugs, telecommunications,
and external and internal frontiers and airports. ORSIS, the Steering
Committee responsible for the Schengen Information System (SIS)
also reports to the Central Group.

The Schengen structure therefore

comprises ministers at the highest level and officials from member
states at lower levels. Again, what is significant here is that officials
charged with law enforcement tasks are able to frame issues in fairly
technocratic ways according to the perceived ‘objective’ needs of
emergent European polity, and these are the very people who play
a key role in shaping developments, due to the prominence of
informal networks in the field of justice and home affairs.

These

officials have been principally concerned with the implications for
law enforcement agencies of a world in which boundaries appear to
be being replaced by networks and flows and the state’s capacity to
produce internal order and security is being eroded.

The perceived difficulty of spatially compartmentalizing civil and

criminal functions of both the state and the EC led to a more compre-
hensive attempt to facilitate cross-border police and law enforcement
cooperation. As mentioned, creating an internal European market
and removing internal controls – a move largely driven by corporate

Justice and Home Affairs Post-September 11 99

interests – created a number of new pre-occupations for law enforce-
ment agencies. Again, given their function within the state structure
and their associated frames of reference, preventing the abuse of
relaxed border controls became their major concern, and doing so
seemed to necessitate increased cross-border collaboration. Regular
contact between different ministerial services within the Schengen
framework (mainly Ministries of the Interior, Transport and European
Affairs with little involvement of Foreign Affairs) also helped to con-
solidate further the new way of looking at the issue. As Bigo points
out, the treatment of issues related to migration and asylum with
other concerns, such as political subversion, terrorism, and organized
crime, became merged in a ‘security continuum’ in which threats to
security were characterized as essentially criminal in character and,
more often than not, ‘imported.’

These concerns resonated with

the dominant political discourse, which identified the SEA as a major
achievement, though one that had some negative implications. The
removal of controls and restrictions to the free movement of capital,
goods, and persons, it was claimed, would generate new opportunities
for criminal and other kinds of illegal activities. Threats to internal
security, which had until now been dealt with at the national level,
would now have to be tackled at the European level. ‘Internal’ secu-
rity thus became defined as a legitimate area of European cooperation
and, as Malcolm Anderson and Joanna Apap point out, increased
emphasis was placed on non-European, transnational components
of the variety of issues subsumed within this new field of coopera-
tion.

This new moral imperative for cooperation took on a specific,

common significance within the context of the collapse of the Soviet
Union and globalization and fears about illicit immigration and
the internationalization of criminal organizations. The collapse of
Communist regimes in Eastern Europe prompted widespread anxi-
ety in Western Europe about ‘tidal waves’ of illegal immigrants and
resulting social and political instability.

As Malcolm Anderson notes,

the image of migratory flows jeopardizing internal security was (and
still is) essentially integrated into the discourse on law and order. In
effect, the old external threat of Communism was being replaced by
an external threat of mass migration and organized crime, as well
imported terrorism, the penetration of which would, like the old
threat, lead to the destabilization of Western societies.

In such a

climate, ministries of the interior and governments in general could

100 Securing Europe

adopt measures that political constraints might otherwise have hin-
dered, such as intensified employment of controversial, pro-active
policing and border control techniques

that not only facilitated,

but indeed required further coordination and cooperation by pushing
their efforts outwards, beyond national borders. What is noteworthy
is that these measures were not taken principally in relation to terror-
ism, which itself was somewhat ‘demoted to a position amidst other
internal security concerns,’

but largely in relation to setting up new

borders to stem the flow of ‘undesirables’.

While the Schengen Agreement remained outside the EC frame-

work, it nevertheless encompassed a much more comprehensive
attempt to facilitate cross-border police and law enforcement
cooperation than its perceived forerunner, the TREVI Group. The
‘flanking’ measures that accompanied the provision for the free
movement of people were more ambitious, in that they were aimed
at creating a standardization of practices designed to ‘compensate’
for the removal of internal border controls and to facilitate joint
action against a series of challenges to internal security, including
terrorism. As the result of a seemingly practical measure, such as
eliminating border controls between participating states, greater
cooperation in other areas followed. Measures introduced to increase
security included: strengthening border controls at EU external bor-
ders; the establishment of a common visa policy for short stays of
up to three months; the creation of pan-European coordination of
asylum proceedings; the improvement of cross border police coop-
eration, particularly though the exchange of information on wanted
and ‘undesirable’ persons; and improvement of cooperation in the
area of criminal justice.

Moreover, with these provisions a number of new modes of coop-

eration were put in place, deepening integration in relation to these
issues. The Convention enabled police to pursue someone who has
been caught committing a crime, or who has escaped custody, into
a neighbouring member state, though stopped short of enabling a
formal arrest. It also established rules on surveillance and operations,
and included detailed provisions for mutual assistance between law
enforcement authorities in criminal and extradition matters. In
order to facilitate cooperation, the Schengen states also agreed to set
up the SIS, the purpose of which is to allow any Schengen member
access to information on people and property for the use in both

Justice and Home Affairs Post-September 11 101

checks at external borders and for investigations within the coun-
tries concerned. In line with the identification of illegal immigra-
tion as a security issue, i.e. its ‘securitization’, the Convention also
brought issues of asylum and conditions for admission at external
borders – including visas and harmonized methods of supervision
and deportation – into cooperative arrangements.

A separate elec-

tronic email system, the Supplementary Information Request at
the National Entry (SIRENE), was also set up to facilitate the rapid
transfer of information. In order to facilitate common treatment of
asylum and visa applications, a shared information system, known
as the Visa Inquiry System In an Open-border Network (VISION), was
also created.

While cooperation prior to the Maastricht Treaty was predomi-

nantly informal, comprising national, regional and local politicians,
executives, and practitioners (police, judiciary, immigration, and
customs at local and regional levels), the 1992 TEU further expanded
and formalized the role of the EU in developing and implementing
policies in the field of justice and home affairs, and, in doing so,
increased the importance of Brussels-based practitioners.

The Treaty

set up a pillar system with the European Community (including the
single market and the single currency) as the first pillar, the CFSP
as the second and JHA cooperation as the third.

The horizontal,

network- or project-oriented governance arrangements were thus
transformed into more formal structures, though JHA policymak-
ing remained intergovernmental. This did not, however, imply that
rationally calculating states would guide the policy process from
now on as approaches drawing on the traditional terms of IR would
suggest. Some of the key actors driving developments remained
those active in a decentralized framework for policy coordination,
which involved exchanges between mid-level representatives from
member states as well as Commission officials. In fact, the Treaty
significantly increased the role of such officials. One of the most
important negotiating structures and platforms for the elaboration
of objectives and related measures was the K4 Committee, in which
the preparatory work related to JHA developments took place. The
K4 Committee incorporated the TREVI Group, as well as a number of
its ad hoc working groups. It thus drew on the work of these groups
and, one can assume, incorporated many of the same participants.
It consisted of senior representatives from the relevant ministries of

102 Securing Europe

member states and an observer from the Commission. It has three
steering groups, each of which had a number of working groups.
Steering Group I on Immigration and Asylum had working groups on
migration, asylum, visas, external frontiers, and forged documents.
Steering Group II on policing and security matters had working
groups on terrorism, police cooperation, drugs and organized crime,
customs cooperation, training, scientific matters, crime analysis,
combating environmental crime, public disorder, and EUROPOL.
Steering Group III on Judicial Co-operation had working groups on
extradition, international organized crime, criminal and European
Community Law, the Brussels Convention, and the transfer of docu-
ments. It also dealt with the legal dimensions of attempts to counter
terrorist funding and fraud against the Community.

With respect to its stress on the importance of ‘technical’ tasks

setting in motion an expansive ‘logic’, leading to greater author-
ity being ceded to ‘central’ institutions, neo-functionalism would
have been suggestive. However, the ‘spill-over’ occurred, here, as a
result of the redefinition of issues and, most importantly, because
of the redefinition of these issues as common issues, suggesting an
emergence of a conception of the ‘common good’. By officially rec-
ognizing terrorism, organized crime, and the trafficking of drugs as
matters of common interest and providing the Council of Interior
and Justice Ministers and the K4 Committee with responsibility in
these areas, the Treaty gave the EU a legal basis for common action
and paved the way for more systematic regulation of the appropriate
configuration and deployment of security apparatuses. The creation
of a third pillar for JHA marked a watershed in the Europeanization
of the policies, practices and structures associated with the blur-
ring of the traditional, conceptual division between internal and
external security challenges. As in the case of the Schengen flank-
ing measures, the underlying rationale for increased cooperation
under a third pillar was closely linked to the association of illegal
immigrants, refugees and asylum seekers with threats with ‘internal’
security within the EU. The elaboration of political union provided
the opportunity to give cooperation in this field a solid political and
legal base, and include all of the (then) 12 member states within its
ambit.

The Treaty thus called for greater cooperation between police

forces. One of the perceived major achievements in this respect was

Justice and Home Affairs Post-September 11 103

the creation of a union-wide system for exchanging information:
the EUROPOL Drugs Unit, established in January 1994. The idea for
this, it will be recalled, was originally worked on by one of the TREVI
Working Groups. It was, therefore, not simply the result of interstate
negotiations between states at the time of treaty reform, but the
result of repeated interaction between officials within an informal
policy network. EUROPOL differed from the SIS in that it served as a
liaison body between national criminal intelligence units, collecting,
analysing, and sharing operational and strategic intelligence informa-
tion on transnational organized crime and terrorism. Liaison officers
from national units in member states were seconded to EUROPOL.
It was, therefore, not operationally independent of national criminal
intelligence units and depended on their cooperation in the supply
of information and intelligence, which is stored on an informa-
tion system. In March 1995, its functions were expanded to cover
smuggling of nuclear materials, illegal immigration networks and
illicit trafficking of stolen vehicles.

What is noteworthy is that

European-wide intelligence and security functions were initially
created in the name of fighting organized crime, specifically the traf-
ficking of drugs. The reason why terrorism was not, at first, included
in EUROPOL’s agenda, even though the provision for the body’s
creation mentioned terrorism, was due to the absence of a common
appreciation of the ‘risk’ posed by terrorism and, therefore, a com-
mon definition of terrorism. It would have been extremely difficult
for member states to establish whether or not action by EUROPOL
was justified without such a definition.

Despite the inability of EU member states to agree on a common

definition of terrorism, efforts were made to define a common work-
ing terrain. On 25 October 1995, ministers of justice and the interior
drafted the so-called Gomera Declaration, which was based on a mini-
mal consensus on reinforced cooperation against terrorism. As Monica
den Boer notes, the wording in the declaration indicates that the defi-
nition of terrorism was moving closer to that of international organ-
ized crime, indicating the breaking down of the boundaries between
issues. The language of the Declaration used key words that apply to
both terrorism and to organized crime, such as ‘organizations’, ‘tran-
snational’ and ‘threat to economic and social stability’. Both threats
were, therefore, regarded as phenomena requiring joint action, as
well as a preventive, proactive approach, with support of intelligence

104 Securing Europe

gathering and/or covert policing strategies, and stepped-up judicial
cooperation. The Declaration also showed signs of an attempt to iden-
tify terrorism as a threat to the core principles of the EU – democracy,
human rights, and social and economic development – and specifi-
cally identified fundamentalism as a cause of increased terrorist activi-
ties. According to den Boer, fundamentalism mentioned in the text
replaced the ‘old’ external threat of Communism and signalled an
attempt to construct a common European security identity. Rhetorical
attempts to frame terrorism as a common external threat, she main-
tains, however, failed at this time to translate into identification of a
common threat to the EU itself, since terrorist activities still tended to
be aimed at influencing individual government policies rather than
at the EU as a whole.

This was linked to the reflexivity of domestic

actors. Domestic institutional orders did not enable officials to deviate
from established practices at this point.

As a result, counter-terrorism was not yet perceived as a legitimate

basis for judicial cooperation in criminal affairs. This was reflected in
the difficulty of securing agreement on even a very limited conven-
tion covering the extradition and prosecution of suspected terror-
ists.

Attempts at facilitating judicial cooperation were, nevertheless,

taken during this time. Member state governments adopted an EU
Extradition Convention in September 1996, the aim of which was to
supplement the functioning of both the 1957 European Convention
on Extradition and the 1977 European Convention on the Suppression
of Terrorism (ECST). The controversial political offence exception,
which was built into the ECST,

was also partially watered down after

the insertion of an article stating that conspiracy or membership of a
criminal organization that commits terrorist offences may no longer
be defined as a (non-extraditable) political offence. The Convention
also provided for the possibility of greater legal assistance among dif-
ferent state authorities.

Efforts to increase contacts between magistrates were also under-

taken. By means of a Joint Action of 22 April 1996, a framework for
the exchange of magistrates with expertise in the area of judicial
cooperation procedures was established. It, however, only laid down
guidelines for member states that chose to exchange liaison magis-
trates. Following a Belgian initiative, a European Judicial Network
(EJN) was established by a Joint Action of 29 June 1998 in order to
further cooperation between member states’ judicial authorities. The

Justice and Home Affairs Post-September 11 105

EJN is a network of contact points comprising, for instance, lawyers
and judges of member states. These contact points are supposed to
provide, in accordance with their own state’s laws and division of
responsibilities, information requested from judicial authorities or
other contact points so that they may prepare an effective request
for cooperation or to improve cooperation in general, particularly
in relation to serious forms of crime. The network also organizes
meetings of member states’ representatives and provides background
information on lists of judicial and local authorities in other mem-
ber states and the procedural systems of other member states, for
example.

In December 1996, the European Council commissioned a so-

called High Level Group (HLG), composed of high-ranking police
officers from member states, to formulate a plan of action in rela-
tion to combating organized crime. The plan was approved by the
European Council in April 1997. Among other things, the HLG called
for a further extension of EUROPOL’s remit, making it an offence in
all member states to ‘participate’ in a ‘criminal organization’, as well
as further reflection on the principle of ‘double criminality’, accord-
ing to which a requested state must grant assistance to the requesting
state only if the offence concerned is punishable also in the requested
state. The Action Plan also advocated centralization and coordina-
tion as an effective means of combating crime, as well as the creation
of ‘multidisciplinary integrated teams’. The HLG proposed that each
member state designate an agency with ‘overall responsibility for
the coordination of the fight against crime’ to act as a single contact
point for mutual assistance between the member states, providing
access to all national law enforcement agencies responsible for the
fight against organized crime.

Here again, officials within informal

policy arenas were engaged in Europeanizing activities in relation to
the judiciaries of member states.

The 1997 Amsterdam Treaty, which set the EU the objective of main-

taining and developing the Union as an AFSJ, further formalized and
extended the influence of Brussels-based practitioners. Significantly,
the K4 Committee was renamed the Article 36 Committee (CATS),
which now coordinates the work of the various working groups on
police cooperation, judicial cooperation in criminal matters, SIS,
as well as the activities of other agencies working in the area of
police and judicial cooperation, such as EUROPOL, EUROJUST, the

106 Securing Europe

European Judicial Network, CEPOL, etc. The Commission also shares
the right of initiative and, therefore, has a greater role in the policy
formation process.

In addition to attempting to improve operational cooperation

between national police authorities through the establishment of
an EU Police Chiefs Task Force (PCTF),

which constitutes a means of

enabling the further development of trans-European police network,

the Treaty further clarified and expanded EUROPOL’s potential role.
It gave EU member states five years to enact legislation enabling
EUROPOL ‘to facilitate and support the preparation, and to encour-
age the coordination and carrying out, of specific investigative
actions by the competent authorities of member states, including
operational actions of joint teams comprising representatives of
Europol in a support capacity’. Member states were also required to
establish rules allowing EUROPOL to ‘ask the competent authorities
of member states to conduct and co-ordinate their investigations
in specific cases.’

As Ben Hall and Ashish Bhatt point out, the lat-

ter role represented a significant extension of EUROPOL’s power,
signalling a shift from an information resource or database towards
a body that instigates and coordinates investigations carried out by
national authorities. Furthermore, the Treaty gave EUROPOL the
legal base with which to carry out operations itself, in conjunc-
tion with national authorities, signifying a strengthening of its
law enforcement role. What is noteworthy is that ideas developed
within the informal HLG were now being institutionalized, indicat-
ing horizontal Europeanization. An agreement on the Convention
for the creation of EUROPOL, as it exists today, was signed by repre-
sentatives of the member states in June 1998 and came into force in
October of that year. EUROPOL commenced its first activities under
the Agreement on 1 July 1999.

Despite the fact that EUROPOL was

furnished with a legal base for anti-terrorism activities, little was
done in terms of implementing the treaty’s provisions, due to the
lack of consensus on the issue of terrorism.

Attempts were also introduced to facilitate judicial cooperation.

Most countries within the EU space have ‘dual criminality’ require-
ments, whereby an offence must be the same in each country in order
for a court to comply with requests from abroad. In order to overcome
this, the Amsterdam Treaty provided for the establishment of mini-
mal rules relating to the definition of criminal acts and to penalties in

Justice and Home Affairs Post-September 11 107

the areas of organized crime, terrorism and drug-trafficking; in other
words, the approximation of criminal law. Member states agreed to
create the same offence for participating in a criminal organization.

In October 1999, an EU summit dedicated to discussing the imple-
mentation of JHA provisions in the Treaty took place in Tampere,
Finland. Some commentators have characterized the resulting work
plan as equivalent in its scale to the creation of a single market.

Attention focused on action in the areas of asylum and immigration,
criminal and civil judicial cooperation, and combating cross-border
organized crime. The European Council Presidency Conclusions
also mentioned the creation of a new judicial cooperation agency
(EUROJUST). A timetable for the implementation of measures, plus a
‘scoreboard’ with which to keep progress made towards implement-
ing the measures and meeting agreed deadlines for the creation of
AFSJ under constant review, was also established, an instrument that
had been used for the implementation of the internal market and
signifies an effort at increased regulation in the absence of legal obli-
gations. In particular, the speed with which member states respond
to requests from another’s law-enforcement authorities was placed
under scrutiny. A formal review process on the Tampere agenda was
later undertaken at the 2001 EU summit in Laeken, Belgium.

This

is an instance of Europeanization through soft law, even though the
identification of terrorism as a truly common threat to EU member
states continued to prevent criminal law from being considered a
legitimate area of European action.

In sum, then, we can say that the field of JHA has been character-

ized by horizontal Europeanization. Informal networks, the first of
which was established in relation to ‘Euro-terrorism’ in the 1970s,
provided a platform for the common understanding of the new ‘inter-
nal’ security environment between ministers of the interior, senior
officials, and police officers. For the most part, Europeanization in
the area of ‘internal’ security has been propelled by the inclusion of
other issues, such as transnational organized crime and illegal immi-
gration, which had become identified as common threats to security
and elevated to a special category status requiring joint action within
the context of the creation of an Internal Market. Put another way,
largely practical issues related to the enabling to the free movement
of goods, services, and people, led to increased cooperation in numer-
ous other policy areas. Thus, not unsurprisingly, the most significant

108 Securing Europe

developments took place in relation to police cooperation, as well as
management of the external border. Judicial cooperation in criminal
matters proved much harder to achieve, though best practices had
been established with the creation of the Tampere ‘scoreboard’ and
the subsequent development of a formal regulatory process. More
significant strides were not made in this area, however, because EU
member states had not as yet identified terrorism as a common threat
to EU ‘internal’ security.

Europeanization of ‘Internal’ security post-9/11

On 21 September 2001, less than two weeks after the attacks in New
York and Washington, the European Council convened an extraordi-
nary meeting to discuss measures to be taken in response to 9/11. At
this meeting, the Council decided to draw up a common definition
of terrorism. The subsequent Council Framework Decision of 13 June
2002 on Combating Terrorism defined terrorist offences as those
acts ‘committed with the aim of intimidating people and seriously
altering or destroying the political, economic or social structures of
a country (murder, bodily injuries, hostage taking, extortion, fabri-
cation of weapons, committing attacks, threatening to commit any
of the above, etc.).’

Terrorism was thus reframed as a common,

European threat. Not surprisingly, greater weight has been placed on
the Islamic fundamentalist dimension of terrorist activities, rendering
the ‘foreign’ dimension an acute threat to the economic well-being
and stability of Western societies and making increased European
cooperation seem all the more imperative. The definition is so broad
that it could even include hackers against information systems, anti-
globalization activists, etc. The heightened sense of danger and crisis
associated with terrorism’s ‘asymmetric’ character has also made an
EU response to it seem all the more urgent. The way was thus paved
for the creation of a number of new instruments and agencies aimed
at increasing intelligence, police, and judicial cooperation. In addi-
tion, the Council called upon the EU’s institutions to prepare specific
measures for dealing with the terrorist threat, including those aimed
at strengthening the control of the common external border and air
transport security.

As a result, EUROPOL’s investigative capacities were augmented

as several procedural instruments were introduced to facilitate

Justice and Home Affairs Post-September 11 109

cooperation in criminal matters. The European Council initially
responded to the attacks by ordering all member states to surrender
any relevant information and intelligence to EUROPOL. Based on
information and intelligence provided by police forces (ordinary
police, criminal investigation, and special branches) and intelli-
gence services (domestic and foreign) via a Counter Terrorism Unit,
EUROPOL was granted the power to open and expand analysis files
on terrorism.

The Council Decision of 28 February 2002 established EUROJUST.

The fact that it was created on the basis of a Decision and not a
Convention, which would have required ratification by national
parliaments, reflects the sense of urgency and perceived excep-
tional circumstances following September 11.

It was also, it will be

recalled, outlined by the HLG, as well as mentioned in the Presidency
Conclusions of the Tampere European Council of 1999 and the Nice
Treaty. Composed of one national member from each EU member
state (prosecutor, judge or police officer), its mandate is to improve
the coordination of investigations and prosecutions in member
states, to facilitate the execution of international mutual assistance
and extradition requests and to support investigations of the com-
petent authorities in member states. Its actual involvement in inves-
tigations is excluded. Under the Decision on the Implementation
of Specific Measures for Police and Judicial Cooperation to Combat
Terrorism of 19 December 2002, all member states are required to
establish national contact points responsible for collecting all rel-
evant information concerning and resulting from national investiga-
tions and prosecutions with respect to terrorist offences and passing
that information onto EUROJUST, as is the case with EUROPOL.

The Decision establishing EUROJUST also envisages close collabora-
tion with EJN, to the point of giving it privileged access to the EJN’s
centralized information and integrating the latter’s secretariat into
that of EUROJUST.

The Council has also expressed the wish that

national criminal records become more interlinked through the crea-
tion of a European network.

The European Council Framework Decision of 13 June 2002 on

Joint Investigation Teams enables members of EUROPOL to partake
(if requested) in joint investigation teams, comprising national
police officers and magistrates of EUROJUST that specialize in
counter-terrorism, established for a specific purpose and a limited

110 Securing Europe

time period in order to carry out criminal investigations in one or
more of the member states responsible for establishing the team. The
purpose of such a team is to identify obstacles to mutual legal cooper-
ation. Its members may also be asked to participate in multinational
ad hoc teams for the exchange of information on suspected terrorists
in the pre-criminal, investigative (i.e. intelligence) stage under the
Council recommendation of 26 April 2002 on multinational ad hoc
teams for exchanging information on terrorists in the pre-criminal
investigative phase.

This instrument enables investigations taking

place in two or more EU states to work together to tackle cross-
border criminal activities. The decision to create joint investigation
teams stems partly from the work of the HLG, the 1999 Tampere
European Council Conclusions and from the not yet fully ratified
2000 EU Convention on Mutual Legal Assistance;

the concept is,

therefore, not new. As a result of the creation of a Union-wide cross-
border intelligence function, as well as the intensification of judicial
cooperation in criminal matters, they also mean that EUROPOL
now resembles a hybrid, FBI/CIA-type agency with law enforcement,
counter-intelligence, and foreign intelligence functions.

Heads of Security and Intelligence Services were also requested to

meet regularly and to include members of domestic security agen-
cies and foreign intelligence agencies in their cooperative efforts.
They were also tasked with compiling an inventory of legal compe-
tences of the intelligence services in the field of anti-terrorism. This
is essentially a new, ad hoc group that stands alongside the PCTF.
Information between the group and EUROPOL is also likely to be
exchanged, despite the fact that the group has no legal status, no
provision for data protection, and no mechanism for parliamentary
scrutiny and accountability. A first meeting was held on 11 and
12 October 2001, while the Heads of EU Counter-terrorist units met
on 15 October 2001. The latter meeting was held as part of an effort
to improve operational cooperation between member states and
third countries, to coordinate anti-terrorist measures being under-
taken in member states and to consider the tasks to be assigned to
counter-terrorist specialists within EUROPOL.

The 9/11 attacks have also acted as a catalyst for greater judi-

cial cooperation. Here, the fact that the response to the crisis was
regarded as a response to a common threat to security of member
states is paramount. The common definition of terrorism enabled

Justice and Home Affairs Post-September 11 111

increased cooperation in this area to move forward.

The most sig-

nificant development in this domain is the common arrest warrant,
which will apply to serious, organized crimes, as well as to ‘terrorist’
offences. The aim of The Council Framework Decision of 13 June
2002 on European Arrest Warrant and Surrender Procedures Between
Member States was to replace old extradition procedures with faster,
simpler ones, involving national judicial rather than political authori-
ties. Essentially, the arrest warrant is based on the mutual recognition
of the court decisions of EU member states. This means a warrant
for an arrest in one EU state will be enforceable in all others. While
judges in the state surrendering a suspect will be able to question the
procedure used by requesting judges, they will not be able to chal-
lenge the substance of the charge. A tight timetable will also make
the ‘surrender’ of suspects quicker than under the old system of
extradition. What is significant about this instrument is that it gives
the EU a role in criminal justice by applying the principle of mutual
recognition – a principle that the Tampere European Council had
already identified as a cornerstone of judicial cooperation, but was
slow to be implemented due to the perceived importance of criminal
justice to state sovereignty.

Efforts have also been made to combine

the principle of mutual recognition with the same kind of access to
information between member states.

The Framework Decision on Terrorism, proposed by the

Commission and adopted at the JHA Council at a meeting on 6–7
December 2001, is aimed at facilitating judicial cooperation through
the approximation of criminal law by employing the key concept
of terrorist offences to establish minimum rules relating to the con-
stituent elements of criminal acts, compiling a list of offences, and
aligning the level of sanctions against those convicted of committing
acts of terrorism. Moreover, a peer review system involving mutual
evaluation of terrorist measures has been put in place to monitor
the effectiveness of national systems and their implementation of
anti-terrorism measures.

Peer evaluations of national structures on

combating terrorism were to be completed by 25 September 2005.

The governments of EU states have also intensified measures aimed

at guarding the EU’s external border. The Presidency Conclusions of
the Thessaloniki European Council of 19–20 June 2003 called for ‘a
coherent approach to biometric identifiers or biometric data, which
would result in harmonized solutions for documents for third country

112 Securing Europe

nationals, EU citizens’ passports and information systems (VIS and
SIS II).’

The Commission has since been asked to formulate legislative

proposals with respect to biometric identifiers and data, as well as the
development of a VIS (visa information system) and an SIS II (second
generation SIS).

The Commission has also proposed a Council regu-

lation to create an additional EU level body, the European Agency for
the Management of Operational Co-operation at the External Border.
This agency is now in operation. Its purpose is to coordinate the opera-
tional activities of member states at external borders and to facilitate
the application of the Schengen acquis, in order to ensure a high level
of control of persons, to surveillance of the external borders, and to
provide training for border guards and carry out risk assessments.

This implies further decentralization of the policymaking process in
this domain. In addition to these proposed measures aimed at the
control of external borders, the EU has engaged in more pro-active
border control measures conceived as an expanded first line of defence
against challenges to internal security. At the end of September 2001,
for example, EUROPOL co-ordinated an operation comprising 10,000
police officers from both EU and central European candidate states in
order to obtain intelligence about routes used to smuggle illegal immi-
grants, drugs, arms, and explosives into the EU.

In sum, then, the September 11 attacks, as well as more recent

attacks in Madrid and London, have increased the Europeanization
of police forces, intelligence agencies, and judiciaries within member
states. This appears to have occurred largely as a result of a sense of
crisis, as well as the identification of terrorism as a common, European
threat to security and thus a threat to an emergent European politi-
cal order. This enabled a number of measures, many of which had
already been worked out prior to 2001 by the K4 and Article 36
Committees, to be taken. The establishment of ‘internal’ security as
a legitimate area of European cooperation in the 1990s has helped to
transform member states sovereignty as it is expressed in the creation
of public order and, as a result, their interests.

Reshaping of domestic institutional orders

As alluded to above, through a process of co-determination of
national and regional institutional orders, institutional practices
within member states have been modified in response to ‘rules’

Justice and Home Affairs Post-September 11 113

constructed at the EU level. This can be discerned by looking at the
way in which they are informing policy discourse, organizational
structures and the subsequent allocation of resources. We can see
this, for example, by examining alterations to policing, border
management and criminal law. According to the structurationist
framework I set out at the end of Chapter 2, change occurs when
two or more institutional orders intersect. However, as I stressed,
the response of actors embedded in domestic institutional orders
would be inclined to vary. This can be detected in the different
reform activities underway in Britain, France and Germany. This
lack of uniformity is connected to the reflexivity of actors, i.e. the
way in which they attempt to order social practices according to
their practical knowledge of how to ‘go about things’. In some
institutional contexts, changes intended to bring domestic practices
and laws into line with ideas formulated within the decentralized
policy frameworks of the EU, for example, will be more easily real-
ized than in others.

Turning first to modifications underway in policing, techniques,

roles, and organizational structures have been undergoing changes that
reflect the breaking down of barriers between issues and the emphasis
on the external dimension of perceived threats to ‘internal’ European
security. Policing has become more ‘pro-active’ or surveillance-based
as a result of the increased emphasis on serious crime that has more
than local ramifications. In relation to human smuggling, for instance,
investigative approaches are based on the premise that victims of traf-
ficking are unlikely to be prepared to testify and, as a result, evidence
is gathered from using techniques such as intelligence gathering and
undercover work.

Efforts to facilitate cross-border cooperation between police forces

have also brought about an extension of their geographical area of
operation, formally allowing police services to be active on other
member state’s territory, as a result of the establishment of JITs.
In general, implementation of the Framework Decision on Joint
Investigation Teams has required the adoption of new legislation
or, at least, adjustments to existing legislation. However, the precise
transposition of the Framework Decision has varied. France, for
example, amended existing legislation and was responsible, along
with Spain, for the creation of the first JIT in September 2004, set
up to investigate attacks by ETA against tourist interests in 2003.

114 Securing Europe

In Germany, no specific legislation was deemed necessary to accom-
modate the Framework Decision.

Britain has been identified by

the Commission as being in non-compliance with the Framework
Decision, since it claimed to have transposed the relevant provi-
sions by means of a non-legally-binding circular. Considerable
variations, therefore, exist in the way in which member states have
implemented the Framework Decision. The European Commission
claimed in January 2005 that only one member state (Spain) has
adopted measures that are fully compliant with the Framework
Decision on Joint Investigation Teams.

As an ever greater number of transnational challenges to ‘inter-

nal’ security were merged together, central units set up to deal with
‘specialized policing’ tasks began to appear. In Britain, where the
traditional emphasize has been on the decentralization of policing,
a new ‘security supremo’ to act as a coordinator between Britain’s
national anti-terrorist agencies and those of its European counter-
parts has been appointed. The move was part of an overall review
aimed at establishing an integrated anti-terrorist unit under the
overall control of MI5. In France and Germany (as well as most other
EU member states), such centralized anti-terrorist agencies, depend-
ent on respective ministries of the interior, were already created in
response to Euroterrorism in the 1970s.

Germany was, in fact, at

the forefront of this development. German law enforcement agen-
cies had been ill-prepared for the transnationally-organized under-
ground campaign of the radical Baader-Meinhof ‘Red Army Faction’
(RAF) that grew out of the 1968 student revolution and developed
connections with the Palestinian Liberation Organization (PLO).

After a failed attempt to free Israeli athletes at Fürstenfeldbruck
Airport in 1972, reform of the German police force was initiated. The
Grenzschutzgruppe 9 (GSG9) was founded within the framework
of the border police force, as a special, anti-terrorist unit. At the
state or local level, reaction teams were set up by patrol divisions,
named ‘Specialeinsatzkommandos’ (SEK), which were to deal with
terrorist activities of all kinds as long as the case remained under the
jurisdiction of the state or city government. Similarly trained and
equipped as the GSG9, the SEKs became the bastion of tactical police
operations in Germany. While they are more widely accepted than
the GSG9, the tactics of SEK units are, nonetheless, of a paramili-
tary type. In France, an intervention group within the paramilitary

Justice and Home Affairs Post-September 11 115

Gendarmerie Nationale – Groupe d’Intervention de la Gendarmerie
Nationale (GIGN) – and the Recherche, Assistance, Intervention et
Dissuasion (RAID) were established. At the time of these develop-
ments, the less centralized nature of the British police force made it
less suited to the creation of national-level, paramilitary police unit
specifically designed to deal with civil disorder and terrorist acts. As
a result, the specialized central unit dealing with terrorism, the 22
Special Air Division (SAS) Regiment’s Counter-Revolutionary Wing
(CRW), is dependent on the military rather than the police.

In connection with serious and organized crime, a National

Criminal Intelligence Service (NCIS) was created. This agency will,
moreover, shortly be amalgamated with the National Crime Squad,
as well as parts of Her Majesty’s Revenue and Customs (HMRC) and
Immigration, to form the new Serious Organised Crime Agency,
reflecting the further the impact of the merging of internal security
‘threats’. In Germany, Federal Criminal Police Office (BKA) is the
national central agency for crime-fighting. Its role is to support the
federal and state police forces in the prevention and prosecution of
serious and transnational crimes, such as trafficking in weapons,
drugs, ammunitions, explosives, the manufacture of counterfeit cur-
rency, money laundering, etc. It is also the central point of contact
for international and regional cooperation. In France, the Direction
Centrale de la Police Judiciaire is the central agency responsible for
criminal investigations.

Police forces have also become increasingly implicated in policing

the EU’s external border. Similar centralizing tendencies are evident
in relation to border management. The Schengen arrangement, for
example, requires that one leading authority hold the responsibil-
ity for national border security. This authority is to consist of one
national non-military and specialized organization that is to be
responsible for border security and the organization should operate
under the auspices of either ministries of the interior or justice.

France, the border police central directorate (DCPAF), which steers
and coordinates the action of all national police departments on
illegal immigration control and is dependent on the ministry of
the interior, was created in 1999. It is in charge of the operational
aspects of international cooperation. In Germany, the Federal Border
Guard (BGS) is a federal branch of the police force and falls under the
authority of the Federal Ministry of the Interior. In Britain, no such

116 Securing Europe

central agency exists as yet and border control is carried out through
close cooperation between the police, the Security Service (MI5), and
Immigrations and Customs.

Cooperation between border guards is, however, producing a counter-

tendency. A key development aimed at facilitating the operation of
cooperation ‘in the field’ following the Schengen arrangement is the
creation of the Police and Customs Cooperation Centre in Offenburg
in 1997 that oversees the Franco-German border zone. French and
German customs and police agencies have been brought together
‘under one roof’ to work together. This centre, moreover, aims at
becoming a focal point for all regional cooperation cases. According to
A. Maguer, the border area is developing into an ‘identifiable security
administration bloc’. She claims that this type of intensive interaction
is influencing French and German national systems: ‘The introduc-
tion of new work methods and new techniques and the development
of new competences and work-related knowledge have made border
services into sources of information for the overall reform of police
agencies in general.’

There is, thus, a sense in which border manage-

ment is being developed outside of the traditional state framework.

As Derek Lutterbeck notes, a tendency toward militarization of

border management is also observable.

This, however, has been less

marked in Germany, where, for historical reasons, strong opposition
to the army is playing a role in border enforcement exists. Moreover,
semi-military, gendarmerie-type agencies have come to play a pre-
dominant role in the area of border and immigration control. As
Lutterbeck points out, as security agencies, which have traditionally
been located between internal and external security, were well situ-
ated to profile themselves as the predominant borderland immigra-
tion agencies, thus relegating those agencies formally responsible
in this area to a secondary role. Moreover, with their implication in
border and immigration control, these intermediary agencies have
also witnessed a reinforcement of their military or quasi-military
characteristics. They have, thus, been increasingly employing mili-
tary technology, and have resorted to more military-type tactics to
control the border.

In line with the securitization of immigration, Lutterbeck also

observes that guarding the borders against unwanted migration
no longer simply takes the form of strictly guarding the line, but
involves going beyond the line, into the countries of source and

Justice and Home Affairs Post-September 11 117

transit, as well as further within the physical border.

Some EU

member states have established mobile border police forces, which
operate in a large zone behind the internal border, some authorized
to carry out checks without giving a reason for so. Since 1998, for
example, the German Federal Border Guard has had an extended
brief enabling it to check peoples’ papers beyond the 30-kilometre
zone.

Fears that criminals will take advantage of disparities between dif-

ferent legal jurisdictions have also led to efforts to minimize such
differences through the approximation of criminal law. What is note-
worthy is that this goes beyond traditional mechanisms for combat-
ing crime. It represents a step towards establishing common criteria
for public order, particularly in relation to punishable offences. It has
been sought largely through Framework Decisions or, in other words,
through soft law. Prior to 9/11, Framework Decisions on counterfeiting
in relation to the Euro, combating fraud and counterfeiting of non-
cash means of payment, money laundering, combating terrorism, as
well as the trafficking of human beings, were, for example, developed.
In relation to the Framework Decision on the trafficking of human
beings, the UK has been developing legislative frameworks with which
to implement the Framework Decision on trafficking for the purposes
of sexual exploitation. A new offence of trafficking in persons for the
purposes of prostitution was introduced as a stop-gap measure under
the 2002 Nationality, Immigration and Asylum Act. A more wide-
ranging offence covering trafficking for sexual and labour exploitation
was later introduced in the Sexual Offences Act 2003.

The Act made

new provisions for the offence of trafficking for prostitution, which
now carries a maximum penalty of 14 years’ imprisonment. New laws
on trafficking for labour exploitation have also been proposed, and are
reportedly at policy development stage, which is dealt with at present
under civil (rather than criminal) law.

In France, forced labour is now

identified as an offence, which was not the case prior to the adoption
of new legislation in March 2003. Changes have also been made to
the German Penal Code in February 2005 implementing the EU (as
well as UN) guidelines. These amendments criminalized forced labour
trafficking, and aiding and abetting trafficking.

Member states have

been more reluctant to approximate sentencing, which tends to be
addressed on a case-by-case basis, and minimum rather than maxi-
mum levels of sentences are generally approximated.

118 Securing Europe

Changes in national laws are also being altered to enable member

states to comply with the Framework Decision on the EU Arrest
Warrant (EAW), which is based upon the principle of mutual recog-
nition, i.e. recognition of the right to retain differences in criminal
law. One of its most controversial aspects is the removal of the
requirement of dual criminality, which allows the responsible judicial
authority to refuse extradition if the conduct for which it is requested
is not considered criminal in its own jurisdiction. Whether the con-
duct for which extradition is requested falls within the 32 categories
of offence outlined in the Framework Decision is a matter for the
issuing authority, except where any part of the conduct takes place in
the surrendering authority’s territory. The Extradition Bill, currently
being debated in the British House of Lords, encompasses the EAW. In
France, domestic legislation was changed in 2004 to incorporate the
provisions of the EAW.

A German EAW Act already exists, though

it has been contested.

Challenges to the EAW indicate that mutual trust among judicial

authorities and sufficient protection for individual rights is still lack-
ing. This is likely to hamper the implementation of the EAW, since
it relies on judges’ interpretation of the Framework Decision, which
means that judicial authorities in member states will determine the
scope of the instrument. At the moment, national practices differ.
There is still, for instance, a discrepancy between judicial definitions
of crimes within the EU, rendering the abolition of the dual crimi-
nality requirement problematic. It is, therefore, not clear whether a
de facto reinstatement of the dual criminality requirement and the
development of jurisdictional rules that lead to the non-extradition
of nationals will hamper the implementation of the EAW. In fact,
grounds for non-execution of the EAW have already been specified in
many EU states. In Britain, extradition will be refused if a person acted
‘in the interests of national security.’ On 18 July 2005, the German
Constitutional Court declared the EAW null and void on the basis
that it gave insufficient weight to the constitutional right of Germans
not to be extradited. As a result, German citizens cannot be extradited
under the EAW until new legislation is adopted. While the principle
of mutual recognition is vital to the preservation of diversity between
national legal jurisdictions, practitioners concerned with the ‘correct’
functioning of the EAW may conclude from these difficulties that
greater approximation of national laws is unavoidable if increased

Justice and Home Affairs Post-September 11 119

cooperation premised on the mutual recognition principle is to be
made to work.

Ironically, its application will, therefore, lead to

increased harmonization of criminal law.

In sum, then, the merging of numerous security challenges, such

as terrorism with illegal immigration, and their identification as
common, European risks has translated into the greater merging of
the roles of ‘internal’ security agencies: emphasis on intelligence-
based, pro-active policing has grown, greater provisions for use of
the military in support of the police are observable, and police forces
have also become more involved in border management. The geo-
graphical scope of policing has also expanded beyond the nation
state with the advent of cross-national investigative teams, as has
border management. In Germany, the external border zone has fur-
ther expanded towards the interior as well as outwards into source
and transit countries. A centralizing tendency can also be observed
in relation to policing, as specialized policing units are being set up
within the member states. A similar development is also visible in
relation to controlling the border and can be observed in the estab-
lishment of central coordination units, though counter-centralizing
trends are also developing as a result of ‘in the field’ cooperation
between border management agencies.

The drive to increasingly standardize criminal justice within the EU

is also beginning to have an impact within the member states, largely
through the approximation of criminal law, as well as through the
application of the principle of mutual recognition. Developments
in this area are, nevertheless, less pronounced than in the area of
policing, since considerable differences exist still in relation to the
definition of offences and sentencing, which is considered crucial to
national sovereignty, is in the hands of judges.

Transatlantic security relations

Neo-Marxist insights into the relationship between institutionalized
cooperation in the field of JHA post-9/11 and transatlantic security
relations are useful in pointing up the role of the US in the develop-
ment of JHA. It was certainly the case that the US exerted consider-
able pressure on the EU to take a number of measures following the
September 11 attacks. However, while US demands and the climate
of exceptionalism may have hastened their adoption, these measures

120 Securing Europe

had been on the agenda for some time in Europe. It cannot be said,
therefore, that these measures were taken as a direct response to US
pressure.

Prior to 9/11, cooperation between the US and Europeans tended

to take place within multilateral forums such as Interpol, the UN, the
G8 Financial Action Task Force, and via the EU–NATO New Trans-
Atlantic Agenda. Bilateral relations between the US and many EU
states, of course, also existed (and still do). Indeed, the US had taken
great care to foster strong working relations with the law enforce-
ment and government agencies of many EU states, stationing liaison
officers from, for example, the FBI and the Department of Justice in
those states, and deploying US personnel to assist with anti-terrorist
investigations in Europe. The US had also sought more formalized
anti-terrorism cooperation with the EU. The EU, however, had not
shown the same level of enthusiasm for intensified cooperation in
this area, largely due to the difficulty of reaching an agreement on
the issue among all representatives of member states – a difficult
task resulting from the varying threat perceptions and responses to
terrorism that until recently acted as an obstacle to further counter-
terrorism cooperation among EU states themselves.

The US has, however, been a benefactor of increased law enforce-

ment and intelligence cooperation between EU states. Developments
at the EU level provided an ‘added value’ to existing arrangements
from the point of view of many within the US. Increased collabora-
tion with the US in the field of law enforcement and intelligence,
in turn, allowed the EU to contribute to countering terrorism in a
way that would have been more problematic for a variety of political
and practical reasons. After September 11, the EU brought forward
a range of measures to facilitate transatlantic cooperation in the
area of ‘internal’ security. First, cooperation between the EU and the
US in the area of information and intelligence sharing in relation
(though not limited) to counter-terrorism has been intensified and
institutionalized with the signing of an ‘interim’ cooperation agree-
ment between the two parties on 6 December 2001. This agreement,
which has since been made a full agreement, was aimed at facilitat-
ing information and intelligence sharing by enabling exchanges of
liaison officers between EUROPOL and US federal law enforcement
agencies. The first EU liaison office was opened in the European
Commission offices in Washington on 30 August 2002. The liaison

Justice and Home Affairs Post-September 11 121

officers stationed there are tasked with exploring, developing and
ensuring contacts between EUROPOL and the US. Their mandate
also includes promoting and facilitating information exchange with
specific US agencies, such as the FBI and the Drug Enforcement
Agency (DEA), in the areas of gathering and providing information
and intelligence, and communicating relevant changes taking place
in investigative methods, as well as the development of organized
crime.

The cooperation agreement was designated ‘interim’ because it

envisages the transmission of personal data between EUROPOL
and the US, though the US has no federal data protection law. The
provision was withdrawn from the interim agreement as a result of
concern about the exchange of data surpassing EUROPOL’s remit and
the terms set out in the EU Charter of Rights, for example by pre-
cluding rights of access to data being exchanged, and the exchange
of information on race, political opinions, religious beliefs, and a
person’s health and sexual life in the absence of an identified data
protection body on the US side.

Many within the EU feared that

data exchanged could be used to sentence someone to death in the
US, in spite of there being no death penalty within the EU. US and
EU authorities have subsequently negotiated mutual legal assistance
and extradition treaties that provide for ‘extensive provisions for
data protection and the provision of evidence and information.’

The cooperation agreement represents a significant achievement

for the US, particularly for the representatives of US federal law
enforcement agencies, who initiated the agreement, given that
EUROPOL now constitutes a focal point for the gathering of criminal
and terrorist intelligence among EU member states, and also because
its competencies add to the police investigative relationship they
already have with member states. It is also an achievement, since
inadequate US data protection laws had previously prohibited a rela-
tionship with EUROPOL developing.

The fact that the agreement

was negotiated so rapidly and with a minimum amount of contro-
versy owed much to the reigning climate of urgency in which these
measures were taken and the subsequent circumvention of their par-
liamentary scrutiny.

The EU–US legal assistance and extradition treaties, which were

negotiated under Articles 38 and 24 of the TEU allowing the EU to
negotiate and conclude agreements with a non-EU state without

122 Securing Europe

requiring consultation with national or European parliaments, were
signed on 25 June 2003. The most significant provisions of the Mutual
Legal Assistance Treaty include giving ‘US law enforcement authori-
ties access to bank accounts throughout the EU (and vice versa) in
the context of investigations into serious crimes, including terrorism,
organized crime and financial crime’, and enabling the EU and the
US to set up joint investigation teams to carry out undercover police
operations. The extradition treaty permits extradition for a broader
range of offences punishable within both the requesting and surren-
dering states by allowing extradition for offences punishable by more
than one year in prison.

In addition EUROJUST, like EUROPOL, has

been asked to intensify cooperation with anti-terrorist magistrates
in the US. An agreement has also been reached for the exchange
of liaison officers between US federal law enforcement officers and
EUROJUST. According to the (then) President of EUROJUST, facili-
tated liaison between EU and US magistrates would not involve the
direct exchange of information between them.

Increased emphasis has also been placed on cooperation in rela-

tion to border controls and transport security. The Commission’s
proposals in response to Council calls for harmonized solutions for
documents for third country nationals, EU passports, and informa-
tion systems highlighted the importance of the verification and
identification of travellers and the vulnerability of current travel
documents. These proposals were presented as a response to the
September 11 attacks.

They met with considerable opposition. On

13 March 2003, the European Parliament widely adopted a resolu-
tion regretting the joint declaration by the US and EU officials of
19 February 2003, which allowed European airlines to transfer
data to US customs officials on passengers flying to the US. In the
opinion of the European Parliament, this would infringe the 1995
European Directive on data protection of individuals with regard to
the processing of personal data and on the free movement of such
data. Furthermore the European Parliament was not informed about
the talks with US officials. As result, it called upon the Commission
to suspend the joint declaration as soon as possible, and instead
implement a coherent EU policy on the use of Passenger Name
Record (PNR) data

for transport and border purposes, which would

fully respect the human rights framework under EU law. There are a
number of concerns in relation to the transfer of the sort of data that

Justice and Home Affairs Post-September 11 123

the US authorities have requested from the EU. The most relevant
of these concerns is the potential abuse, or rather non-proportional
use, of ‘sensitive’ information. The Commission, which has a man-
date to make findings of adequate data protection in third countries,
declared itself committed to further discussions with the US Customs
Border Protection Bureau, which has provided some assurances.

May 2004, the US and the EU reached an agreement allowing airlines
operating flights to the US to provide US authorities with PNR data
in their reservation and departure control systems within 15 minutes
of a flight’s departure. This accord formalizes a practice in place since
March 2003.

In April 2004, the US and the EU also signed a customs coopera-

tion accord, which, inter alia, calls for extending the US Container
Security Initiative throughout the EU. This would involve US cus-
toms officers being placed in EU ports to help pre-screen cargo
bound for the US. The US and the EU are also discussing the use of
‘armed marshals’ on transatlantic flights. In November 2004, US and
EU officials agreed to exchange information about aviation security
technologies, such as airline countermeasures against shoulder-fired
ground-to-air missiles.

In sum, 9/11 has resulted in an intensification and formalization of

EU-US anti-terrorism cooperation. As a direct result of the September 11
attacks, the EU has also established a direct organizational link with
the US. Whereas anti-Communism once represented the principal
moral imperative behind transatlantic unity in the past, terrorism
now appears to have emerged as a fertile terrain for transatlantic
cooperation. Moreover, as Monica den Boer has highlighted, ‘there
is a spill-over from terrorism to other security and mobility-related
issues. Border controls, criminal justice, immigration and asylum
policy have thus become elements inserted in a wider transatlantic
security policy continuum.’

‘Internal’ security is, therefore, likely to

become an expanding terrain for EU–US cooperation.

Conclusion

The transformations that have taken place over the last two decades
in relation to the creation of a European ‘internal’ security field have
brought about a change in the nature of sovereignty as expressed in
the maintenance of public order. The role of informal policy arenas

124 Securing Europe

has been crucial to this process of transformation, understood here
as Europeanization. Accounts of recent developments in the field of
European security that rely on the traditional terms of IR would have
been unable to grasp the significance of growing cooperation in this
domain. In the most obvious sense, this is because the focus would
have been on military threats to security emanating from the realm
of inter-state relations rather than ‘internal’ security. Emphasizing
the centrality of the rationally calculating state would also have
led one to expect cooperation to result from the rational pursuit of
preferences and interests by EU member states. However, prior to the
TEU, cooperation in the area of JHA was predominantly informal
and ad hoc, comprising ministers of justice and ministers of the inte-
rior brought together to discuss matters of law and order, as well as
police chiefs tasked with preparing the agenda, writing reports and
monitoring working groups comprising mid-level officials focusing
on issues of police and security, free movement of people, judicial
co-operation and external relations, etc. These actors have been
central to the process of Europeanization. The TEU further formal-
ized and extended the influence of transnational policy practition-
ers through the creation of a third EU pillar for JHA. It essentially
resulted in the extension of horizontal, network- or project-oriented
governance arrangements into more stable institutionalized struc-
tures. It brought all EU member states’ police, customs, and judicial
authorities under one clearly defined, legally based authority frame-
work – the K4 Committee. The participants of the K4 Committee
are mid-level representatives from member states and Commission
officials.

With the ratification of the 1997 Amsterdam Treaty, the K4

Committee was renamed the Article 36 Committee (CATS), which
now coordinates the work of the various working groups on police
cooperation, judicial cooperation in criminal matters, SIS, as well as
the activities of other agencies working in the area of police and judi-
cial cooperation, such as EUROPOL, EUOJUST, the European Judicial
Network, CEPOL, etc.

As law enforcement and police studies suggest, the knowledgeabil-

ity of these actors, informed by their immediate institutional con-
texts, has also been central to the consolidation of a European field
of ‘internal’ security. Officials charged with law enforcement tasks
tended initially to frame issues according to the perceived ‘objective
needs’ of the European polity. These officials have been principally

Justice and Home Affairs Post-September 11 125

concerned with the implications for law enforcement agencies of
a world in which boundaries are being replaced by networks and
flows and the state’s capacity to produce internal order and security
is being eroded, making European-wide cooperation essential from
their point of view. While cooperation between EU police forces
and the establishment of informal networks, such as TREVI, were
initially concerned with counter-terrorism, other challenges deemed
to have a transnational, foreign dimension to them gradually took
precedence. Indeed, the redefinition of the national security state
during the 1990s was largely linked to the securitization of immi-
gration and associated phenomena, such as organized crime. Their
knowledgeability was, however, bounded in the sense that a number
of subsequent political consequences of the expansive ‘logic’ set in
motion, such as increased authority being given to Brussels-based
bodies, are unlikely to have been intended.

While neo-functionalism would have recognized that ‘technical’

issues can have an expansive ‘logic’, it would not have stressed the
importance of the framing of issues to any subsequent ‘spill-over’.
For the same reason, the significance of conception of the ‘common
good’ would have been obscured. Yet the definition of these issues
as common security risks led to the Europeanization of policing and
border management, in particular. Terrorism, at this stage, was not
identified as a common, European threat, since terrorist activities were
for the most part aimed at individual governments. The lack of a
common definition of terrorism meant that cooperation between
EU member states’ judiciaries was comparatively slow to develop,
though regulative norms were, nevertheless, established in this area
with the creation of the Tampere ‘scoreboard’ and the development
of a formal regulatory process.

The ‘War on Terrorism’ has helped to further institutionalize and

intensify police, intelligence, and judicial cooperation within the EU.
The climate of exceptionalism that followed the attacks, in effect,
further consolidated the ‘internal’ security field. In particular, the
formulation of a common definition of terrorism has enabled the
further cooperation in the area of criminal law and intelligence. One
of the most significant developments in this regard is the creation
of the EAW, which replaced old extradition procedures. What is sig-
nificant about this instrument is that it gives the EU a greater role
in criminal justice by applying the principle of mutual recognition

126 Securing Europe

between judiciaries and relies upon member states’ judicial systems
applying an identical scheme. Cooperation in the area of intelligence
is being encouraged within an informal network, which may in time
lead to more concrete measures being taken. The climate of excep-
tionalism following the attacks has also enabled a number of meas-
ures to be introduced more quickly than they might otherwise have
been. A number of decisions based on earlier proposals were taken,
notably in relation to the creation of EUROJUST, an Agency for the
Management of Co-operation at the External Border and an exten-
sion of EUROPOL’s competencies. All these bodies have extended
the influence of Brussels-based officials and will undoubtedly raise
the profile of those professionals based in member states that are
networked with them.

While neo-Marxist insights into the relevance of growing coopera-

tion in JHA for transatlantic relations are helpful in drawing atten-
tion to the role of the US in the development of this field, measures
taken by the EU post-9/11 cannot be solely attributed to US pressure.
Increased and formalized intra-European cooperation in the areas of
law enforcement, intelligence, and border controls has also shifted
EU member states’ relations with the US. As noted by den Boer, ‘[i]t
is clear that the transatlantic axis against terrorism has opened the
EU-door to the USA far more widely than before, and that there is a
spill-over from terrorism to other security or mobility related issues.
Border controls, criminal justice co-operation, immigration and asy-
lum policy have thus become elements inserted in a wider transat-
lantic security policy continuum.’

100

In effect, it has further unlocked

an abundant area of transatlantic collaboration – one that is likely to
expand with a ‘transatlantic internal security continuum’ – and this
deserves further scrutiny.

127

The Stability Pact for South
Eastern Europe

Introduction

On 10 June 1999, the day that the United Nations Security Council
Resolution No. 1244 mandating intervention in Kosovo was issued,
the foreign ministers of the EU, Albania, Bosnia-Herzegovina,
Bulgaria, Croatia, Hungary, Romania, the Russian Federation,
Slovenia, the former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia (FYROM),
Turkey, the US, Canada, and Japan met in Cologne, Germany, with
representatives from numerous international organizations, to for-
mally endorse the Stability Pact for South Eastern Europe.

As an EU

initiative, the establishment of the Pact signified a new phase of the
EU’s approach to the Balkans. Its earlier approach had been over-
whelmingly reactive. It had also responded separately to successive
crises in the Western Balkans rather than attempting to stabilize the
region as a whole. The EU’s first attempt to remedy these deficien-
cies with a ‘Regional Approach’ failed to address comprehensively
the causes of conflict and to capitalize on the stabilizing potential
of the two EU candidate states, Romania and Bulgaria. The Regional
Approach was, moreover, uncoordinated with other initiatives and
programmes aimed at stabilizing the Balkans, producing overlap and,
in some instances, competition. The SP represents an effort to over-
come these shortcomings. It was created as a framework to support
a multilaterally coordinated endeavour to address the sources of the
conflicts on a regional basis. It aims to do so, above all, by connect-
ing the process of stabilization with preparation for accession to the

128 Securing Europe

EU, as well as linking this to complementary initiatives undertaken
by other international actors.

Given the association of conflict prevention with eventual EU

membership, the SP plays a significant role in terms of orienting
SEE states towards ‘Europe’. However, this dimension of the SP is
beyond the scope of the present study and is more directly rel-
evant to Europeanization of the policies, practices and structures
of the Balkan states themselves. This chapter focuses, instead, on
the way in which the SP demonstrates the influence that member
state institutions can have on the process of Europeanization. At
the time of the Pact’s inception, Germany held the EU Presidency
and German security practitioners were particularly important in
bringing about the EU’s new approach to SEE. Their preferences
were informed by German collective identity vis-à-vis the European
integration process and strategic culture.

In this sense, institutions,

broadly defined, not only include formal rules, procedures, and
norms, but also cognitive templates that frame the construction
of meaning informing the behaviour of actors played a significant
role in establishing the SP and thus bringing about a shift in the
EU’s approach to the region. The SP, therefore, represents a case
of vertical, bottom-up Europeanization in that German security
practitioners were able to successfully project their policy prefer-
ences to the EU-level during the policy formation period. In order
to capture the role of institutions during this phase, I focus on
the manner in which the preferences, interests, and identities of
German security practitioners shaped the nature of the Pact. These
preferences, interests, and identities are themselves derived from
interaction governed by domestic institutions. What is particularly
interesting is that these institutions are themselves the product of
Germany’s Europeanization. This provides another instance of the
process of co-determination of national and regional institutional
orders. The way in which German security practitioners viewed
the problem and went about dealing with it was, thus, in many
respects distinctly European. To this end, the establishment of the
SP is particularly useful in demonstrating the co-determination of
national and regional institutional orders during the process of
Europeanization.

In what follows, I first discuss the EU’s approach to SEE prior to

the establishment of the Pact. I outline the transition from reactive

The Stability Pact for South Eastern Europe 129

crisis management to long-term conflict prevention, highlighting the
novelty of the SP with respect to earlier approaches. I then consider
how more traditional accounts of developments in European security
would interpret its creation under German leadership. I argue that
these accounts fail to capture the role that institutions played in the
inception and adoption of the Pact. I then employ the analytical
framework set out in Chapter 2 in order to show how Germany’s
domestic institutions in fact had a significant impact on the con-
struction of the EU’s common strategy towards SEE. Specifically, I
attempt to discern what role the practical knowledge and identities
of German security practitioners had in the policy formation stage.
This implies looking at how they understood the problem and how
they went about responding to it. Given the co-constitution of social
practices and institutions, it also implies ascertaining how this knowl-
edgeability was informed by German collective identity and strategic
culture. I argue that this specific practical knowledge was crucial in
bringing about the EU’s new approach to SEE. A number of other fac-
tors facilitated the promotion of their preferences during the policy
formation phase. In particular, the framing of issues by international
donors was important. Finally, I consider the significance of the SP
for transatlantic security relations, since the Pact implied a significant
boost in the EU’s role in the SEE, whereas the US had hitherto been
the major force for change in the region.

From reactive crisis management to long-term
conflict prevention

The EU’s involvement in the Western Balkans has gone through a
number of phases. Its initial approach, which can be characterized
as reactive crisis management, concentrated on the consequences
instead of the sources of conflict. It also dealt with problems in the
Western Balkans on a case-by-case basis rather than developing a
strategy to stabilize the region as a whole. The EU subsequently
adopted a Regional Approach, which aimed at stabilization through
regional cooperation. The Regional Approach was, however, flawed
in that it applied only to a limited number of fields and ran parallel
to other major initiatives aimed at stabilizing SEE, causing overlap
and competition. Created during the German chairmanship of the
EU to address these shortcomings, the SP constitutes a long-term

130 Securing Europe

approach to conflict prevention in the region through the process of
EU enlargement.

The EU’s approach to SEE prior to the Stability Pact

Before the process of disintegration of the former Yugoslavia began,
the EC had neither the instruments nor sufficient common ground to
launch a comprehensive strategy towards stabilizing SEE. Its approach
was, therefore, faltering, reactive, and ultimately overshadowed by
the role assumed in the later phase of the crisis by the UN and, in
particular, NATO under American aegis. While EU member states,
including Britain, France, and Germany, contributed most of the
units comprising the United Nations Protection Force (UNPROFOR)
mission in Bosnia, these units were, nevertheless, coordinated by
NATO, with significant American political and military leadership.
In addition, the NATO bombing campaign played a significant role
in forcing the Bosnian Serbs to make concessions. The US also spon-
sored diplomatic talks and negotiated the Dayton Peace Agreement
in December 1995. In short, the US was by far the most important
international actor and the main agent of change in the Balkans
during this period, and American ‘coercive diplomacy’ appeared to
be more decisive than the ‘soft’, diplomatic tools available to the EU
at the time.

Despite being overshadowed by the US, the EU nevertheless came

to play a more prominent role in Bosnia, and in SEE in general, fol-
lowing the conclusion of the Dayton Agreement. In Bosnia, the EU
provided economic assistance and took on some security-related
(policing) and administrative tasks in the country. In Albania, the EU
sent troops to stabilize a crisis situation that had resulted from the
collapse of pyramid saving schemes in 1997. The WEU also organized
international police operations to help restore law and order. It also
arranged a de-mining operation in Croatia and helped monitor the
situation in Kosovo as from 1998 through satellite imagery provided
by the (then) WEU Satellite Centre.

However, the most important dimension of the EU’s involvement

in SEE was the conclusion of association agreements or ‘Europe
Agreements’ with Bulgaria and Romania, which were regarded as a
first step towards full EU membership. These agreements were aimed
at achieving tangible progress towards developing a stable market
economy and liberal democracy in these countries. This amounted

The Stability Pact for South Eastern Europe 131

to a case-by-case approach, given that only some SEE countries had
signed such agreements, and reflected the absence of a comprehen-
sive strategy towards stabilizing the region as a whole. However, the
fact that they were not encouraged to cooperate with each other,
but to direct their efforts out of the region toward Western Europe,
tended to produce competition between governments of SEE coun-
tries in their relations with the EU. It also meant that transnational
issues troubling the region, such as refugee return, border, and
minority issues, were inadequately addressed and that an opportu-
nity to alter relations between the states of SEE through encouraging
regional cooperation was being missed.

In an attempt to overcome these shortcomings, the EU adopted

a Regional Approach in February 1996, as part of the Royaumont
Process on Stability and Good Neighbourliness in South Eastern
Europe, which was established to support the implementation of
regional aspects of the Dayton Agreement. The Process aimed to
facilitate the implementation of the peace plan by providing eco-
nomic and political support to the former countries of Yugoslavia
(except FYR) and FYROM through a range of instruments, including
financial assistance under the PHARE and OBNOVA programmes,

autonomous trade preferences and Co-operation and Association
Agreements. The Co-operation Agreements concluded with Albania
and FYROM and the extension of PHARE and OBNOVA assistance
to both countries, as well as the trade preferences given to Bosnia-
Herzegovina and Croatia, were made dependent upon conditions
set by the Commission and, to some extent, made EU cooperation
with the Balkan countries conditional on their mutual cooperation.
However, the emphasis on regional cooperation was largely restricted
to the promotion of civil society, culture, and human rights, and, as
such, did not encompass other dimensions that were later considered
crucial for the stability of the region as a whole. In addition, this
particular combination of instruments failed to exploit the stabiliz-
ing potential of Bulgaria and Romania, resulting from the Europe
Agreements.

In addition, the Regional Approach overlapped with the South-East

European Co-operative Initiative (SECI), the US strategy towards sta-
bilizing the region. The SECI was created to promote concrete projects
to support the development of market economies in SEE. The pro-
gramme – which is still in operation, but is now run in cooperation

132 Securing Europe

with the SP – primarily focuses on facilitating regional cooperation in
combating transborder crime in order to make SEE more attractive to
investors. To this end, the SECI Centre, in Bucharest, Romania, has
been providing, inter alia, assistance to SEE countries in order to har-
monize their law enforcement legislation with EU requirements, to
support the joint training of law enforcement officers, national efforts
to improve domestic cooperation between law enforcement agencies,
and the creation of a mechanism to assist cooperation in preventing,
detecting, investigating, and prosecuting transborder crime. Activities
undertaken under the auspices of the SECI were uncoordinated with
those of the EU and were, at least to some extent, in competition
with them.

The creation of the Stability Pact for South Eastern Europe

As another war in the Balkans seemed imminent, EU member states
agreed to develop a Common Strategy on the Western Balkans at
the Vienna Summit, which took place on 11 and 12 December 1998,
during the Austrian Presidency of the EU. The Common Strategy was
one of the new instruments designed to strengthen the CFSP under
the 1997 Amsterdam Treaty. While agreement among EU member
states on a common strategy constituted a positive step forward it
was, nevertheless, in an indeterminate state until the Treaty came
into force on 1 May 1999.

In the Presidency Conclusions, discus-

sion was made of the EU’s contribution to ‘political and economic
development’ and ‘prosperity and stability’ in South Eastern Europe
through, on the one hand, the enlargement programme, involving
a number of countries of the region and, on the other hand, the
regional approach involving countries of the Western Balkans. As
would be expected, there appears to be very little indication of a
change in the EU’s approach at this stage, and no mention of any-
thing approximating the Stability Pact.

The European Commission

was still very much focused on preparing Central European countries
for accession to the EU.

The shift in approach would come during Germany’s EU Presidency,

which began in January 1999. The presidency of the EU, in particular,
provided German security practitioners with an important diplo-
matic tool with which to set the agenda and to give a strong impetus
to the initiative. According to a German official, this partly explains
the very short timeframe in which developments occurred: NATO

The Stability Pact for South Eastern Europe 133

airstrikes began in late March and in early June everything was on
track and agreed within the EU. This was only possible because the
German presidency was able to determine the agenda of the meetings
in Brussels and to push its initiatives at every level.

The first step

was taken on 1 April 1999 when Germany hosted a conference of EU
representatives with the foreign ministers of ‘front-line states’, which
led to the proposal of a comprehensive ‘stability pact’ for South
Eastern Europe.

Joschka Fischer presented a text at the Council

meeting in Luxembourg on 8 April 1999, which called for a ‘clear-
cut and repeated declaration … of the EU that the countries of the
region have the perspective of membership, even if that looking from
today lies in an unspecified future. … The perspective of EU member-
ship is, as developments in the Central and East European countries
have demonstrated, a crucial stimulus for transformation’. Criteria
or conditions for entering into negotiations on membership were
not included in the text, in order to leave some room for discussion
of the issue. In the Council Conclusions, the governments of the
member states stated that ‘[a] political solution to the Kosovo crisis
must be embedded in a determined effort geared towards stabilising
the region as a whole. South Eastern Europe needs a Stability Pact
opening the door to a long term political and economic stabiliza-
tion process. Such a broad based strategy should take advantage of
existing regional initiatives.’

The German initiative of a long-term,

broad-based stabilization process was envisaged for South Eastern
Europe as a whole was thus backed by other governments.

At the General Affairs Council meeting in Luxembourg on 26 April,

the Council agreed to begin with preparations for a Stability Pact for
South Eastern Europe. It stated that ‘[t]he Stability Pact will give all
countries in the Balkans region a concrete perspective of stability and
integration into Euro-Atlantic structure.’

Again, a strategy aimed at

the whole of South Eastern Europe is considered and the mention of
a ‘concrete perspective’ in relation accession to the EU and NATO is
alluded to.

The knotty issue of offering EU membership to Western Balkan

countries was, as mentioned, not agreed upon initially. Among the
major EU members, the initial proposal stating that a clear cut and
repeated commitment to offering the countries of the region an
EU perspective some time in the future was strongly backed by the
governments of the UK and, of course, Germany. However, French

134 Securing Europe

representatives had grave reservations about giving some countries
an EU perspective for fear that they might be admitted ill-prepared
for membership.

While the

final text of the Pact refrained from cre-

ating a direct link between conditionality and accession,

reflecting

the concerns of some states, it nevertheless held out the possibility of
eventual EU membership. Thus, from their initially divided positions
over the perspective of giving the countries of the Western Balkans
an EU perspective, a common position had finally been formulated
among EU members, as well as within the Commission.

While Britain and France, as well as other EU member states,

backed the German initiative at the Council meeting on 8 and
26 April 1999, the language of the text was watered down in the fol-
lowing weeks, due to serious reservations about granting an EU per-
spective.

In early May, correspondents had already reported from

Brussels that a full perspective of membership was not planned by
the Commission. During the next Council meeting on 17 May 1999
in Brussels a ‘Common Position’ by the European Commission was
submitted, which was leaked, reporting French, Spanish, and Dutch
objections against offering countries like Albania and FYROM a real
perspective for accession.

While differences existed regarding the

extent to which such a pact ought to be linked to EU membership,

the EU Council of Ministers nevertheless supported the initiative
and endorsed a Common Position on 17 May 1999. The version
that was finally endorsed stated that ‘the EU will draw the region
closer to the perspective of full integration of these countries into
its structures … with a perspective of EU membership on the basis
of the Amsterdam Treaty once the Copenhagen criteria have been
met’. This was a clear modification of the Fischer team’s language.
For the first time, full integration of all the countries of SEE in the
EU was envisaged. However, the perspective of membership was
now explicitly tied to the Copenhagen criteria of 1993 and the
Amsterdam Treaty, indicating that there would be no short cut to
EU membership.

At the Petersberg meeting of the EU Political Directors (senior

officials) on 27 May, the Stability Pact was finalized. Fischer now
conceded that there would be ‘no short cut into the European struc-
tures’. However, he added, ‘if the very idea of Europe shall unfold its
full potential also in South Eastern Europe, the stabilization process
will need to promise a clear cut EU accession perspective for the

The Stability Pact for South Eastern Europe 135

countries of former Yugoslavia and Albania, even if the realisation
will only be very long-term.’

The Pact was formally adopted at the Cologne European Council

summit on 10 June 1999.

The wording that EU governments finally

agreed on was, again, more reserved:

The EU will draw the region closer to the perspective of full inte-
gration of these countries into its structures. In case of countries
which have not yet concluded association agreements with the
EU, this will be done through a new kind of contractual rela-
tionship taking into account the individual situations of each
country with the perspective of EU membership, on the basis of
the Amsterdam Treaty and once the Copenhagen criteria have
been met. We note the European Union’s willingness that, while
deciding autonomously, it will consider the achievement of the
objectives of the SP, in particular progress in developing regional
co-operation, among the important elements in evaluating the
merits of such a perspective.

A long-term approach to conflict prevention in the region had,
nonetheless, been adopted, signifying a shift in the EU’s approach
to SEE.

Europeanization of Germany’s policy preferences

Realist accounts of developments in European security interpret
Germany’s central role in the Pact’s creation in terms of balance of
power politics and interests: Germany had an interest in the region,
and its relative power, especially following unification, enabled it
to impose its agenda within the Council. When it met with opposi-
tion from other EU member states, it compromised and accepted a
watered-down version of its original idea for the Pact. Institutions
would not be considered relevant to the development of a common
EU strategy towards SEE. Instead, the German state would have been
assumed to be acting according to rational calculations guided by
pre-defined interests. The manner in which these preferences and
interests are informed by institutions would not be taken into con-
sideration. Yet an important part of the knowledgeability guiding
the behaviour of practitioners reflected Germany’s own relationship

136 Securing Europe

to the European integration project and the extent to which its own
strategic culture was ‘Europeanized’ over the post-Second World War
period.

Hegemonic stability theory would have failed to sufficiently

emphasize the importance of the practical knowledge of mid-level
security practitioners. Cooperative behaviour came about, at least
in part, because of German practitioners’ understanding of how to
go about things in a multilateral setting. There is a reflex to work
multilaterally at an unconscious level.

Compromise and consensus-

seeking was crucial in winning the support of member states that
were reluctant to envisage giving some states in SEE an EU perspec-
tive.

Liberal cooperation theory would have provided a slightly

more adequate frame of analysis insofar as egoistic governments
are thought to adhere to the rules and principles of international
regimes even when short-sighted assessments of self-interest may
counsel them not to, because regular, intensive interaction can lead
to cooperative behaviour between states. It would, nevertheless,
have viewed the importance of such interaction in terms of reduc-
ing uncertainty and the marginal costs of negotiating new issues
between states, rather than in terms of norms guiding practitioners
in multilateral policymaking environments.

Even the modified version of regime theory advanced by Aybet,

which employs a Gramscian conception of hegemony in order to
escape assumptions of rational action, as well as to better account
for the interaction between preference formation and institutions,
would still take states to be the principal agents of institutionalized
cooperation. The European security ‘architecture’ would be under-
stood as a cultural practice. However, according to Aybet, in order to
make sense of such a regime, it is necessary to adhere to a distinct
realist/English school perspective that views the international system
as a unique phenomenon that functions via institutions which are
unique to it, such as the balance of power. Thus, the European way of
doing things would be understood as a culture of state practice rather
than one also involving the social practices of individuals implicated
in the policy process.

By employing a structurationist framework to examine the estab-

lishment of the SP the role of institutions in shaping the EU’s
approach to South Eastern Europe through the establishment of the
SP becomes visible. When the new German government took over

The Stability Pact for South Eastern Europe 137

the EU Presidency, one of its main objectives was to enhance the
EU’s profile in the area of external relations. The Red/Green coali-
tion government had committed both parties to strengthening the
CFSP.

This commitment has to do with Germany’s collective iden-

tity vis-à-vis the European integration process: the Pact reflected a
strong trust in regional integration, as well as a strong belief in the
intrinsic value of ‘process’, which brings various players to the same
table.

Many German political actors have a predisposition towards

a European approach and solution to foreign and security policy
issues. West Germany’s foreign policy has been established within a
multilateral framework and Europeanized from the start. Indeed, the
Preamble of the Basic Law (the German constitution) stipulates that
Germany should work towards European integration as a means of
stabilizing Europe. German governments have thus consistently tried
to advance greater foreign and security policy coordination.

The idea was to strengthen the CFSP by improving the EU’s capa-

bilities in civilian conflict prevention and peaceful conflict manage-
ment. This is in line with the principles guiding German foreign and
security policy, namely a culture of restraint towards the use of mili-
tary force in conflict resolution, the goal of multilateral cooperation
(if possible within the framework of international institutions),

and

a strong normative, value-based orientation (protection of human
rights and development of international law).

The proposed Stability

Pact was clearly an expression of these principles.

Given the government’s proclaimed commitment to peaceful con-

flict resolution and established foreign and security policy principles
informing officials in the Foreign Ministry, the NATO air strikes
brought the governing coalition, which was deeply divided over
the strikes, to the point of crisis. While the beginning of the NATO
bombardment of Serbia created a sense of urgency for the govern-
ment as a whole, which had only taken office six months earlier, this
was especially true for Fischer, the main cabinet figure of the smaller
governing coalition partner, the Greens. With their strong pacific
heritage, pressure built very quickly among their grassroots against
NATO intervention. The civilian casualties, targeting errors, and lack
of response from Miloševic´’s side all contributed to this opposition
and to the perception that a political approach should be favored.

It would also certainly have made a sizable number of officials in

the Foreign Ministry uneasy. While involvement in NATO military

138 Securing Europe

intervention in Kosovo was testimony to the more relaxed stance
towards the use of force that emerged over the 1990s, there was, nev-
ertheless, a general preference for the restraint of the use of force.

Negotiating a medium- to long-term solution to instability in the
region was, therefore, perceived as all the more urgent. It would have
seemed so not only because non-military solutions to conflicts were
preferred, as well strategies for long-term conflict prevention, but
also because it appeared to have provided a means of blurring the
centrality of NATO in order to ease the domestic crisis in Germany
provoked by NATO air strikes. Thereafter, as Marie-Janine Calic
notes, ‘structural conflict prevention policy in South Eastern Europe
became the leitmotif of the German approach towards the Balkans’
following the NATO intervention in Kosovo.

As the situation worsened, the staff of the Foreign Ministry for-

mulated the idea of a stability pact for SEE, based on a coordinated,
multilateral approach that aimed at conflict prevention rather than
conflict management.

As Ambassador Dr. Michael Schaefer, who

was Head of the Western Balkan’s Task Force in the Federal Foreign
Ministry between 1999 and 2000 and was involved in setting up the
SP, writes

We knew that two processes would be indispensible here: a clear
European perspective for all the states of South Eastern Europe
and crossborder cooperation between all neighbours in the region
as a central step on this road to Europe. … For us it was clear from
the very outset: given the complex social and historical situa-
tion of the countries of the Western Balkans there can be neither
simple nor quick-fix solutions. The vision of integration into the
modern Europe was the only way to bring the region peace and
freedom in the long term.

While the idea for a more comprehensive strategy towards SEE had
already been floated by the French prior to the Kosovo war, the
new German initiative differed in a significant way: it called for
such a pact to be established under the auspices of the EU rather
than the OSCE. Moreover, it linked long-term conflict prevention
in the region with EU membership.

This reflected faith in regional

integration, the commitment to work towards integration as a way
of stabilizing Europe, and the strong belief in the value of ‘process’

The Stability Pact for South Eastern Europe 139

that is characteristic of Germany’s strategic culture.

To this end,

initiatives undertaken under the aegis of the SP are essentially aimed
at constituting a particular type of state, namely through European
integration. The idea governing European integration is that states
can be more effective than they would otherwise be when they
engage in close cooperation or even pool their sovereignty in order
to achieve common objectives. The governments of states wishing to
establish closer relations with the EU or become EU members them-
selves must demonstrate a willingness to adopt a similar approach.
The SP supports this objective by coordinating national strategies
and providing technical assistance aimed at facilitating cooperation
among countries in the region, even if their relations were hostile.

The SP was set up as an intergovernmental conference, with a

permanent secretariat based in Brussels. The secretariat’s role is to
help participants overcome political differences and to coordinate
initiatives in the region. The main mechanism for doing so is the
South Eastern European Regional Table, a type of general assembly
that operates on the basis of consensus and oversees the activities of
three working tables, each of which focuses on one of three sectors
considered vital for the success of conflict prevention and peace-
building, namely the promotion of sustainable democratic systems,
the promotion of economic and social wellbeing, and the creation of
a secure environment.

Working Table I focuses on democratization and human rights.

Initiatives undertaken within this working table are aimed at promot-
ing media freedom and gender equality, strengthening parliamentary
and educational structures, as well as overcoming the legacies of the
past. In the area of media freedom, for example, the Pact’s activities
aim to transform formerly state-controlled media into public service
broadcasters outside of government control and with safeguards for
editorial independence. The focus is thus on broadcast legislation,
quality programming, and the training of journalists. Other initia-
tives include the Parliamentary Co-operation Initiative, which aims
to strengthen the parliamentary structures of countries in the region
in order to help them cope with domestic reform legislation and
integration into an altered global environment, and The Reconciling
for the Future initiative, which aims to help overcome the legacies
of the past related to ethnic conflict in Kosovo and discrimination of
the Roma, for instance.

140 Securing Europe

Initiatives underway under the aegis of Working Table II are espe-

cially aimed at promoting the development of the private sector
through the liberalization of trade and enhancement of the business
environment. SEE countries are in the process of creating what is
hoped will gradually become a free trade area, harmonized with EU’s
internal market. Thus, in addition to supporting the implementa-
tion of the Free Trade Agreements, the focus of the Trade Working
Group is on deepening and broadening integration with a view to
accelerating the process of integration of the countries of SEE into
EU structures, which means encouraging SEE governments to estab-
lish a timetable for harmonizing rules and procedures and ensuring
their convergence with the EU body of relevant legislation (the acquis
communautaire). In order to avoid technical barriers to trade, it will
support efforts to advance towards the implementation of standards,
technical regulations, accreditation systems that are in line with EU
standards, and so on.

Jointly with the Organisation for Economic

Co-operation and Development (OECD), the SP also develops pack-
ages of tailored measures to improve the investment climate, such as
regular business missions for potential investors. The SP also attempts
to involve the private sector in the political process through the SEE
Business Advisory Council, which comprises senior executives from
companies in the EU, the USA, Canada, Japan, Turkey, and Southeast
European countries, and regularly injects feedback. Projects aimed at
improving social cohesion, such as the Initiative for Social Cohesion,
which aims to ensure improvement of the welfare systems of SEE
countries, as well as regional infrastructure (i.e. transport and energy
sectors, and border management), are also supported.

Economic reforms are also intended to be underpinned by

improvement of the education systems of SEE countries, leading to
their eventual harmonization with those of the EU. Due to the lack
of acquis in this area, harmonization is not based on any contractual
arrangements. Instead, a Task Force on Education and Youth supports
the incorporation of SEE into a European Area of Education and pro-
motes this through regional cooperation and networking as instru-
ments for wider participation in EU initiatives. The SEE Education
Reform Implementation Initiative in view of the Accession and
the Stabilisation and Association Processes (ERI SEE), aims to link
national education reform in the sub-region with European trends,
as outlined in respective EU programmes, such as the ‘Detailed Work

The Stability Pact for South Eastern Europe 141

Programme on the Follow-up of the Objectives of Education and
Training Systems in Europe’. Priorities of the ERI SEE include, inter
alia, adjustment of existing national legal frameworks in line with
EU developments, widening access to education, and administrative
reform (e.g. through twinning, decentralization, and information
systems). A Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) on the Initiative,
demonstrating commitment to the ERI SEE’s reform agenda, was
signed by the ministers of education of Bosnia-Herzegovina, Bulgaria,
the Former Republic of Macedonia, and Serbia-Montenegro in June
2003, Albania and Moldova in December 2003, and Kosovo in
February 2004. Croatia and Romania are also expected to sign the
MoU sometime during 2004.

Working Table III dealt with security issues. It was divided into

two sub-tables: one on military issues and another on justice and
home affairs. Through these two sub-tables, it aimed to establish a
stable ‘external’ security environment in the region and to improve
regional cooperation in fighting organized crime and corruption,
and tackling migration issues. The Sub-Table on Security and Defence
focused, primarily, on restructuring and ‘right-sizing’ militaries
within the region by assisting, in cooperation with NATO, in the
retraining of demobilized personnel, and the conversion of military
bases and facilities to civilian use. In 2005, the Zagreb-based Regional
Arms Control Verification and Implementation Assistance Centre
took over these projects.

Other activities are aimed at stemming

the illicit flow and the destruction of small arms and light weapons
(SALW), promoting arms control and confidence-building measures,
and coordinating regional participation in the Ottawa process.

Through the Ohrid Process, the SP, in partnership with NATO, OSCE,
and the European Commission, also aimed to facilitate the develop-
ment of well-managed borders in the Western Balkans.

The Stability

Pact’s Disaster Preparedness and Prevention Initiative is designed to
assist countries in SEE to improve the national disaster management
systems as well as to facilitate the creation of a regional framework
for cooperation in this area.

The Sub-Table on Justice and Home Affairs aims to assist SEE

countries in the incorporation of international treaties, such as
the UN ‘Palermo’ convention on fighting organized crime and
corruption, into national legislation. As Erhard Busek, the Special
Coordinator of the Stability Pact, noted, ‘some countries simply do

142 Securing Europe

not have “organised criminal acts” listed as punishable offences in
their penal codes.’

In order to assist countries in their efforts to

adopt such legislation, two regional secretariats were established
within the framework of SP initiatives: one in Bucharest, Romania,
which focuses on organized crime, and one in Sarajevo, Bosnia-
Herzegovina, which deals with anti-corruption. Police training and
transborder cooperation between police and border forces have
been supported, in cooperation with international actors, such as
the Association of European Police Colleges (AEPC), the Central
European Police Academy (MEPA) and the Nordic Baltic Police
Academy (NBPA), by training courses, covering drugs and weapons
trafficking, police management and crime investigation.

As a

result, cooperative relations linked to policing are being established.
The Police Forum Initiative, established under Working Table III,
involves regional police training, the establishment of an Organised
Crime Training Network (OCTN) and a Stolen Car Project. All
three initiatives essentially involve some degree of joint training,
exchange of information and expertise, and an opportunity to
network and reinforce relationships. The OCTN, for example, is
intended to provide an opportunity to share best practices and
to enhance common investigation activities by improving both
formal and informal working contacts, and to introduce and sup-
port a process for the further development of the organized crime
investigation units in the countries of SEE,

as well as establishing

cooperative links with EUROPOL. The SP has started to connect
SECI centre with EUROPOL.

The initiative has also established a

project to connect major border check points with Interpol.

Border management structures are currently in the process of being

restructured in line with European standards. Through the main
instrument of CARDs in the Western Balkans, as well as through the
EU’s Technical Assistance to the Commonwealth of Independent
States (TACIS) programme

in Moldova, the EU, as indicated, has

committed considerable resources to border guarding issues, par-
ticularly in the areas of administrative reorganization (through twin-
ning arrangements

) and infrastructure support (both provision

of equipment and rehabilitation of facilities). Similarly, the World
Bank’s Trade and Transport Facilitation in South East Europe project
is providing support for the improvement of border infrastructure.
NATO is also providing advice on the military aspects of reforming

The Stability Pact for South Eastern Europe 143

and restructuring border security, while the OSCE is active in relation
to the civilian aspects of reform.

The Stability Pact also created the Reay Group, which aims to facili-

tate a regional approach to mine action within the legal framework of
the Ottawa Convention to which all countries in the region are party,
with the exception of Serbia and Montenegro, which has expressed its
desire to accede. The establishment of a regional mine action support
group acts as a focal point of information exchange and a vehicle for
more synergistic approaches to mine action within the region.

Thus, with very few resources of its own (approximately 2 million

Euro per year, covered by EU funds), the SP is helping to alter the
relations between states in SEE. To the extent that pressure is applied,
it is done through the conditionality right of regional cooperation.
Governments in the region either have to work together or forgo
financial support for projects. As these examples demonstrate, this
prerequisite for funding has encouraged cooperation at the ministe-
rial and official level across a variety of sectors, and, as Busek notes,
has become a ‘self-runner’. As regular contacts have become the
norm in many areas, officials and ministers establish relationships
and, moreover, realize that they can discuss topics within the SP
framework that are domestically taboo. Effective communication
and negotiation between governments and officials not only helps
to create neighbourly relations, but also facilitates the resolution of
concrete issues that affect individuals. Regional cooperation has, for
example, helped to facilitate the resolution of refugee cases between
Croatia, Bosnia-Herzegovina, and Serbia and Montenegro.

The

Stability Pact Task Force on Trafficking in Human Beings (SPTF) is
also encouraging and strengthening cooperative efforts to combat
human trafficking.

The co-determination of national and EU-level institutions can

also be perceived insofar as the SP constitutes a multilaterally
coordinated effort at conflict prevention. At the time of the Pact’s
creation, Germany expressed a clear preference for a multilaterally-
coordinated response, partly informed by the belief that in order
to overcome nationalist post-Soviet conflicts a model of regional
coordination was required, drawing on the EU’s own experience
and offering eventual EU accession as the major carrot. But EU
association and eventual accession could only be offered by the EU
itself. Therefore, it was conceived as important to turn the stability

144 Securing Europe

pact idea over to the EU and its institutions.

While the SP was

initiated and led by the EU it was, nevertheless, conceived as a
multilateral effort. Other international actors or ‘donors’ include
bilateral actors (such as USAID, the Government of The Netherlands
and Switzerland), international organizations (such as the UN, the
OSCE and NATO) and international financial institutions (such as
the World Bank and the IMF), non-governmental organizations
(such as the Geneva Centre for the Democratic Control of Armed
Forces) and expert institutions (such as the Centre for European
Security Studies at the University of Groningen, The Netherlands),
as well as the eight ‘target’ countries of SEE – FYROM, Serbia and
Montenegro, including Kosovo, Bosnia-Herzegovina, Croatia, and
Albania –, the two EU candidate states (Bulgaria and Romania),
and Moldova. With neither financial resources nor implementing
structures of its own, the SP is, above all, a facilitating mechanism,
specifically mandated with coordinating assistance among these
international actors.

The preference for a multilateral approach to the problem was

informed by Germany’s collective identity vis-à-vis the European
integration process and strategic culture. While the German govern-
ment was no doubt partly driven by short-term political calcula-
tions, i.e. the desire to blur the central role of NATO and, thereby,
alleviate the domestic crisis by emphasizing the role of the OSCE,
this kind of purposive behaviour has, nonetheless, to be understood
in particular institutional contexts. A multilaterally coordinated
approach also fitted with an established principle of German foreign
policy. As Piotr Buras and Kerry Longhurst point out, ‘German stra-
tegic culture is rooted in Germany’s past and was constructed after
1945 in the formative years of the Federal Republic’s creation as part
of West Germany’s broader domestic democratization and interna-
tional rehabilitation. The emasculation of German sovereignty at
the end of the Second World War, the international requirements
placed upon Bonn in the context of the emerging Cold War …
shaped the contours and provided the substance of Germany’s new
strategic culture.’

West German policymakers have always had to

pursue their objectives within multilateral contexts. To this end,
German practitioners were acting according to ‘appropriateness’
within a highly institutionalized multilateral context, i.e. within
the EU Council.

The multilateral character of the SP is heavily

The Stability Pact for South Eastern Europe 145

informed by the practitioners’ preferences, interests and identities,
which themselves draw from the Europeanization of German for-
eign and security policy.

As mentioned, the original idea for the Stability Pact was watered

down, due to resistance to giving some states in SEE an EU perspec-
tive. In contrast to what some types of regime theory would lead one
to expect, Germany did not play the role of enforcer of norms within
a regime in which it acts as a hegemon. Instead, German practition-
ers were acting according to established understanding about how to
go about things in multilateral setting, as well as being guided by a
preference for European solutions to foreign and security policy ques-
tions. That other states accepted the idea of linking stabilization and
conflict prevention in the region with EU membership, while still
having doubts about doing so also demonstrates that member states’
policymakers also acted according to what was perceived as appropri-
ate behaviour within the EU context, and this in itself demonstrates a
certain degree of Europeanization.

While the institutions guiding the actions of German security

practitioners were of central importance in bringing about the EU’s
common approach toward SEE, a number of factors also facilitated
the promotion of their preferences in the policy formation phase.
Firstly, the Europeanization of German policy preferences was bol-
stered by the redefinition of Europe’s boundaries.

According to

Fischer, a fundamental consequence of the Kosovo conflict that
helped facilitate the adoption of the Stability Pact was the acceptance
of South Eastern Europe as an integral part of the European continent
for which the EU had responsibility.

This boundary redefinition

seems at least partly related to the border transgressing nature of the
consequences of the conflict, particularly in terms of refugee flows
and the connection between stability in the region and the EU’s own
security.

As discussed in Chapter 4, this would have struck a chord

with foreign ministers. This association was, indeed, explicitly made
by Chris Patten, European Commissioner for foreign relations at the
time: ‘The Balkans are part of Europe. We are – as it were – in the
same boat. Our past and our future are intimately bound together.
Our peoples want the same things – peace, stability, high standards
and decency of life, freedom, prosperity and opportunity. We have
a shared interest in working together to combat organized crime, to
secure respect for minorities and to help build strong states in the

146 Securing Europe

region which are capable of protecting the interest of all their citizens
and of being dependable and good neighbours.’

On this basis, in

the document, the EU, which has assumed a leading role in the SP,
undertakes to draw SEE ‘closer to the perspective of full integration …
into its structures.’

Once the Western Balkans was recognized as a

part of Europe, the possibility of eventual accession to the EU was
rendered more legitimate.

The Fischer team’s success in bringing together a number of other

international actors to back the Pact was undoubtedly facilitated by
the convergence of a number of agendas during the 1990s. Shifting
agendas in the areas of development, conflict prevention and post-
conflict rehabilitation, governance, and security fused nicely with
the developments taking place in relation to the EU’s approach to
SEE. NATO expansion, which constitutes a crucial element of the
Pact, implied reform of SEE armed forces and their greater integration
into Euro-Atlantic political-military structures. While the prospect
of eventual NATO membership was not explicitly mentioned in the
Constituent Document of the SP, being drawn closer to Euro-Atlantic
structures is clearly intended. NATO and, within this framework,
the US, have after all an interest in maintaining involvement in
SEE. NATO has, accordingly, launched its own US-led South Eastern
Europe Initiative (SEEI) that provides an instrument with which
to undertake initiatives coordinated within the rubric of the Pact.
The initiative built on structures already in place to facilitate co-
operative relationships with other ‘Partners’, namely the Euro-Atlantic
Partnership Council (EAPC) and the Partnership for Peace (PfP).
Specifically, an Ad Hoc Working Group on Regional Cooperation
in South East Europe was convened within the framework of the
EAPC, where issues such as crisis management, defence planning and
democratic control of armed forces can be discussed. Within the PfP,
initiatives and programmes that emerge from Alliance and/or EAPC
discussions can be taken forward by countries in the sub-region, with
the assistance of NATO expertise and/or political support. While
there was some resistance, notably on the part of Russia and France,
to giving NATO a prominent of a role in the SP, NATO constitutes
the key international actor in the restructuring of the armed forces
of the countries of SEE.

As Michael Brzoska points out, the absence of the political con-

straints of the Cold War also gave the development donor community

The Stability Pact for South Eastern Europe 147

greater room for manoeuvre, including in the area of security-related
issues. Initially, involvement by development donors in these areas
was confined to purely fiscal matters, partly due to the dominance
of neoclassical economists within donor institutions, who tended to
view military expenditure was a pure waste, and partly due to the
belief that the need for reductions in defence spending in light of
the end of the Cold War would lend legitimacy to such activities.
Reducing military expenditure thus became a major theme in devel-
opment donor discourse and was particularly promoted by the IMF
and the World Bank, as well as bilateral donors such as Germany and
the US Congress. This stood in stark contrast to the Cold War situa-
tion, when geo-strategic calculations favouring a strong military in
some countries swept aside development concerns.

Recipient governments were, however, much less enthusiastic about

what they perceived as development donor interference in internal
military matters. Decisions on the level of military expenditure were
seen as the prerogative of national sovereignty. Efforts by donor
countries to have a say on this matter were, therefore, met with a uni-
formly negative response. While the issue of inappropriate military
expenditure did not disappear from the development donor agenda,
the emphasis shifted in the late 1990s. The focus on fiscal matters
gave way to a broader view of security spending. Consequently, other
elements of the security sector came into view, lack of security began
to be recognized as a development issue, and governance over security
spending became a central concern.

The post-Cold War environment also presented the development

donors with new challenges related to conflict prevention and post-
conflict rehabilitation. Security-related issues were an obvious target
for development donor activity in the field of conflict prevention. A
reformed security sector, incorporating armed forces geared towards
regional cooperation, police forces serving all the people, and a
judicial sector that delivers justice, was viewed as a contribution to
conflict prevention. The gap between activities begun (or not begun)
by peacekeepers and continued (or not) by development donors also
opened up another area where development donors believed they
could usefully contribute to conflict rehabilitation. Slowly, some
development donors got involved in reform activities with a broader
security relevance, such as reform issues related to police forces and,
at least in a few cases, the democratic control of military forces.

148 Securing Europe

Concerns about improvements in efficiency and effectiveness

of public sector institutions increased. Accordingly, development
policies became increasingly informed by the concept of govern-
ance in the early-to-mid-1990s. The major instrument for achieving
improved governance was reform of state institutions. During this
period, development donor discourse on ‘governance’ focused on
down-sizing rather than improving the delivery in public services.
For many donors, particularly the World Bank and IMF, the provision
of a minimal set of public services at the lowest possible cost was
considered a priority, though more transparency and accountability
were also viewed as essential to improving efficiency in what were
generally considered overstaffed public sectors.

A shift in the development donor discourse, however, occurred in

the late 1990s. Donors began to reduce the stress on cost cutting and,
instead, emphasized the need to strengthen states’ capacity to govern
‘effectively’. Hence, programmes aimed at reducing corruption and
improving accountability and transparency gained in importance
towards the end of the 1990s. A good indicator of such change is the
difference in discussion of the role of the state by the World Bank
in its 1997 and 2002 World Development Reports. The World Bank
now argued against a minimalist state and instead for a focus on
state effectiveness in the context of changes in the global economy.
Strengthening certain state powers was now encouraged as a means
of enforcing market discipline and states’ credibility as ‘effective
partners’ in development. One the hand, this entails creating the
foundation of law and the protection of property rights; providing
macroeconomic stability, avoiding price distortions and liberalizing
trade and investment; providing basic services and infrastructure;
protecting the vulnerable; and protecting the environment. On the
other hand, it involves creating checks on arbitrary state action and
combating corruption, improving performance and incentive struc-
tures within public institutions, and broadening participation and
increasing decentralization.

An expanded conception of security began to be promoted by

some international actors in the development donor community.
The 1994 UNDP Human Development Report, for example, featured
two central ideas, which had gained in prominence during the 1990s.
The first was that threats to security were broader than classical mili-
tary threats and included threats such as major ecological disasters or

The Stability Pact for South Eastern Europe 149

epidemics. The second idea was that security policy should not exclu-
sively deal with the security of the state – the main unit of concern in
traditional security policy – and, instead, should include the security
of individuals. Human security, it was argued, was a complement to
human development.

These four concerns became connected by the concept of secu-

rity sector reform (SSR), which can be understood as an attempt to
link the expansion of development assistance into security-related
fields and the new challenges to development donors in the areas of
conflict prevention and post-conflict rehabilitation, and to provide
them with a common vision, intended to promote human develop-
ment, help to reduce poverty, and to allow people – including poor
people – to expand their options in life.

It also implies fostering

particular kinds of states, considered ‘effective’ in their capacity to
carry out public functions.

To sum up, then, the establishment of the SP demonstrated the

role that member state institutions can have on the Europeanization
process. German security practitioners were important in bringing
about a shift in the EU strategy towards SEE. In contrast to what
realist approaches would suggest – i.e. that Germany was driven by
rational calculations informed by pre-defined interests – institutions
were shown to be crucial in shaping German preferences and inter-
ests. The manner in which Germany’s strategic culture and collective
identity have been ‘Europeanized’ over the post-Second World War
period heavily informed the behaviour of practitioners.

As a coordinated, multilateral approach aimed at conflict pre-

vention rather than conflict management in SEE, the SP reflected
German strategic culture. The German initiative differed from other
suggestions for a pact for SEE in that it called for such a pact to be
established under the auspices of the EU rather than the OSCE.
Moreover, it linked long-term conflict prevention in the region to
EU membership. This reflected the commitment to work towards
integration as a way of stabilizing Europe. To this end, initiatives
undertaken under the aegis of the SP are essentially aimed at stabiliz-
ing SEE on the basis of the German experience or, in other words,
through European integration.

Moreover, Germany’s relative power does not appear to have

been determinate in gaining acceptance of a stability pact for SEE
in the face of resistance to the original idea for the Pact as realist

150 Securing Europe

accounts, including some versions of regime theory, would have
led one to expect. Instead, practitioners’ understanding of how to
go about things, informed by the preference for multilateralism
and European ‘solutions’ to foreign and security policy problems,
appears to have been decisive in that it encouraged compromise
and consensus-seeking. In other words, conceptions of appropriate-
ness, rather than compulsion of a dominant power, were important
or even the desire to reduce uncertainty and the marginal costs of
negotiating new issues as liberal cooperation theory would have it.
Even Aybet’s version of regime theory, which draws on a Gramscian
notion of hegemony to avoid assuming rational action and to more
adequately capture the interaction between preference creation
and institutions, would have failed to account for the emergence
of cooperation. The European ‘way of doing things’ would be
understood as a culture of state practice rather than one specifically
guided by the social practices of practitioners.

Their task was greatly facilitated by the fact that Germany held

the EU presidency during a period of crisis. The Pact’s constitution
and realization were unmistakably informed by the preferences of
Germany security policy practitioners in particular, insofar as it is
an effort aimed at long-term conflict prevention, which furthers
the Europeanization of member states’ foreign and security policies,
and is a multilateral effort at the stabilization of SEE. Germany’s
successful use of the EU presidency as a diplomatic tool perhaps
reflects Germany’s collective identity vis-à-vis the European integra-
tion process. The redefinition of Europe’s boundaries by EU member
states was also essential for the success of the Fischer team’s efforts in
promoting a common strategy among EU member states, as was the
rise of governance concerns and the destabilization of the traditional
conception of security for the coordination of a number of interna-
tional actors, including the US and NATO.

Transatlantic security relations

As mentioned, the EU’s role in the Western Balkans in the early- and
mid-1990s was largely eclipsed by that of the US. US ‘coercive diplo-
macy’ appeared to yield better results than the ‘soft diplomacy’ of the
EC/EU. Moreover, EU and US initiatives to promote the development
of market economies were uncoordinated and, to some extent, in

The Stability Pact for South Eastern Europe 151

competition with each other. Yet the SP has greatly contributed to the
transformation of this situation. The EU has now replaced the US as
the most prominent actor in SEE and, what is more, has incorporated
US activities into a broad framework in which it takes the lead. Since
the SP associates stabilization of SEE with EU enlargement, the EU
has paramount influence in terms of state-building within the SEE
countries. If and when these countries become EU member states,
the fact of having been implicated in the transformation and creation
of institutions within and between these states is likely to have an
impact on future transatlantic security relations. However, much will,
of course, depend on the chances that these states will have of a real
prospect of membership and how the EU manages this issue.

Both realism and neo-Marxism would have read the establishment

of the SP as an instance of balancing behaviour. Realism would have
suggested that the US activities in the early to mid-1990s were driven
by Washington’s desire for geo-political pre-eminence in SEE. The SP
would be understood as a European, and perhaps specifically German,
effort to balance the US’s influence in the region. While most of the
neo-Marxist approaches discussed here do not treat states as hermeti-
cally sealed entities, Gowan does tend to depict the EU’s approach to
SEE as an attempt to balance US interests in the region. He argues,
for example, that the major concern for US security policy planners
following the end of the Cold War was to prevent the rise of regional
powers. Germany, along with Japan, was identified as a rising regional
power that might be potentially hostile to US leadership. From this
perspective, the EU’s activities in SEE would be understood in terms of
power projection eastwards and the formation of a European caucus
in the transatlantic alliance. Yet, if US presence in the region were
linked to a grand strategy of domination in Europe, surely Washington
would have demonstrated greater resistance to EU leadership in the
region, particularly since the SP not only implies EU coordination of
US activities in the region, along with those of other ‘stakeholders’,
but also a major role in state-building in SEE.

Conclusion

In this chapter, I have outlined the way in which the EU’s role in
SEE has dramatically transformed over the last decade. It has gone
from being a reactive and largely overshadowed actor in SEE to a

152 Securing Europe

major agent of change in the region, a role that had been played
by the US in the first half of the 1990s. In the early- to mid-1990s,
the (then) EC had neither the pre-disposition nor the foreign and
security policy instruments with which to adopt a comprehensive,
preventive approach to the region. As the EU has developed as an
external actor and extended integration into the domain of ‘internal’
security, the underpinnings of a more coherent approach were put in
place. The new contractual arrangements linking stabilization with
enlargement and the creation of an EU pillar for JHA, for example, all
helped to lay the groundwork for a regional approach to reform that
included reform and restructuring of at least some security-related
institutions and practices.

Nevertheless, the role of Germany was important in bringing the

Stability Pact into existence. Its institutional order informed not only
the spirit of the Pact, but also the manner in which it was brought
about. The SP clearly bore the mark of German security practition-
ers’ predisposition towards civilian crisis management and conflict
prevention, support for the CFSP as a fundamental part of political
union, and commitment to multilateralism. To this end, the Stability
Pact demonstrates the impact that institutions within member states
can have on the process of EU policy formation or, to put it another
way, vertical, bottom-up Europeanization.

The establishment of the Pact was, however, not solely related to

the specific institutional context of German practitioners. In addi-
tion to a commitment to multilateralism, the redefinition of Europe’s
boundaries bolstered the German role. A fundamental factor that
helped facilitate the adoption of the SP was the acceptance of SEE
as an integral part of the European continent for which the EU had
responsibility. The border transgressing nature of the consequences
of the conflict, particularly in terms of refugee flows, helped to shift
the EU’s perception of its boundaries. As mentioned, the preoccupa-
tion with transnational threats to security has expanded the notion
of interdependence to ‘internal security’ matters, particularly in light
of the promotion of the freedom of movement, since it effectively
increases the boundaries of the EU ‘internal’ space. Once the Western
Balkans was recognized as a part of Europe, the possibility of eventual
accession to the EU was rendered more legitimate. This is a crucial
dimension of the EU’s role in conflict prevention. Thus, from their
initially divided positions over the prospect of giving the countries of

The Stability Pact for South Eastern Europe 153

the Western Balkans an EU perspective, a consensus had finally been
reached among EU members, as well as within the Commission.

The changing agendas of other international actors during the

1990s, particularly in the development donor community, were also
important in enabling the incorporation of a multilateral dimension
to the EU’s initiative. The concept of security sector reform, which
united security and development concerns, shared common ground
with the connection being made between stabilization and enlarge-
ment in the EU’s direct relations with SEE countries. Coordinating
major stakeholders’ activities under one roof has provided a frame-
work within which the EU can extend its mandate into governance
and conflict prevention. The model being indirectly transferred
through the SP is one that encourages the dilution of exclusive
national identities and state sovereignties. Reform and restructuring
in SEE, therefore, draws heavily on the internal experience of gradual
integration within the EU itself, based on political consensus and
compromise, an incremental pooling of sovereignty, and an attach-
ment to formal rule-making.

The prominent role played by the EU in terms of institution-

building will impact on future developments in transatlantic security
relations. Should remaining SEE states become EU member states,
their involvement in shaping and creating institutions within and
between states will have an implication for transatlantic relations.
However, much will depend on the extent to which they have
true chances of accession. The shift in the EU’s approach to SEE is,
however, not best conceived as an effort to balance US interests in
the region, but as the result of institutional contexts and identities
informing the behaviour of practitioners involved in the SP’s crea-
tion, as well as changes in conceptions of security and development
underway in broader institutional contexts.

154

Conclusion: Socio-Functional
Europeanization

This study has examined the increasing institutionalization of cooper-
ation between EU member states in the area of security – a process that
I have termed Europeanization. As outlined at the beginning of the
study, significant changes have occurred in European security since
the early 1990s. The EU has established a security and defence policy,
which has led to the transfer of competency from the WEU to the EU
in relation to the military aspects of crisis management operations. As
a result, the EU has engaged in the development of military capabili-
ties designed to permit it to act on behalf of common security inter-
ests, and, at least some of the time, independently of NATO. Parallel
developments have also been taking place in relation to ‘internal’
security, leading to increased cooperation between the police forces,
intelligence agencies, and judiciaries of member states. This has led to
the EU gaining intelligence and criminal justice functions – functions
that, along with defence, are traditionally central to state sovereignty.
The EU has also developed a fundamental role in conflict prevention
on its periphery and is now the most prominent actor in the Balkans,
coordinating the initiatives of international actors engaged in efforts
to stabilize the region, including those of the US.

This stands in stark contrast to member states’ reluctance to coop-

erate in areas deemed vital to national sovereignty during the greater
part of the post-Second World War period. Until recently, insufficient
consensus among EC/EU member states prevented the EU from devel-
oping a security and defence policy of its own, despite a number of
failed attempts to do so. The defence policies and structures of most
European member states were anchored in NATO and thus oriented

Conclusion 155

towards the collective defence of the Alliance. While cooperation
between EC member states’ police and intelligence agencies existed
from the 1970s onwards, the sensitivity of these core functions of the
state meant that cooperation took place only on an ad hoc, informal
basis, with no legal base in EU treaties. Moreover, political differ-
ences regarding the definition of terrorism permitted only a limited
degree of judicial cooperation to take place and, again, only outside
the EC framework. The EU’s conflict prevention initiative in SEE is
also widely divergent from its lacklustre role in the greater part of the
1990s, when the EU was largely overshadowed by the US as an agent
for change in the Balkans. In short, recent developments reflect a
significant reorientation of the European security state.

Descriptive accounts of developments in European security, along

with more self-consciously theoretical analyses, have tended to draw
on the traditional terms of IR theorizing. Neo-realist and realist
approaches, for example, account for increased cooperation in the
domain of European security as the result of states acting as coherent,
undifferentiated units, rationally pursing their interests. Descriptive
accounts similarly assume that preferences and interests are formed
prior to the creation of institutions and that cooperation is, thus, the
result of the rational pursuit of those preferences and interests. This,
however, I argue fails to capture the sense in which national interests
are formed and modified through interaction between security prac-
titioners within institutionalized settings. As a result, variations in
member states’ responses to similar constraints and pressures cannot
adequately be accounted for. Similarly, regime theories assume that
states are rational egoists. Given that states are conceived as mono-
lithic entities, the extent to which regime theorists are really able to
break with state-centrism is limited. Despite efforts to incorporate
perceptions and norms into their analyses, they continue to regard
them in terms of state practice.

Yet the European institutional environment in which states par-

ticipate renders notions of states rationally pursuing their national
interest difficult to sustain. The governance structures related to the
ESDP and JHA are characterized by decentralized and, sometimes,
informal policy networks, in which predominantly mid-level, trans-
national policy practitioners are active. The direction of change
within the EU should, therefore, not be understood simply as the
result of intergovernmental bargains at summits, but as the result of

156 Securing Europe

day-to-day technical, regulatory policymaking. This implies a need to
avoid two fundamental caricatures of the EU: the focus on singular
moments of change or crisis and the tendency to portray the dynam-
ics of integration as resting on an opposition between the poles of
nation state and superstate. In order to do so, a broad definition
of institutions, capable of capturing the way in which participants
of these informal and/or decentralized policy networks play an
important role in Europeanization, is needed.

A neo-functionalist approach would have correctly identified polit-

ical elites as the central actors driving the process of Europeanization
forward, as well as the two-way nature of European integration.
However, the influence of pluralism on neo-functionalism means
that political elites connected to competing groups within member
states would have been identified as critical, rather than mid-level
officials. Moreover, actors are assumed to redefine their interests for
utilitarian purposes. In addition, while it presupposes that integra-
tion must have been driven by structural changes in the international
political economy, neo-functionalism does not provide the concep-
tual tools with which to capture this. Again, the principal problem is
that institutions are defined too narrowly, thus obscuring the way in
which they frame the construction of meaning, create an expansive
‘logic’, and inform actors’ behaviour. This also leads to another dif-
ficulty. Neo-functionalism would have mistakenly assumed a gradual
increase in supranationalism. Yet, while the Commission has played
a role in security dimensions of the integration project, it has been
fairly limited compared to that of security practitioners from mem-
ber states participating in policy networks.

The linkage between different spheres of activity was made by

police and law enforcement studies insofar as they were sensitive to
the impact of globalization on European security. Their focus has,
unsurprisingly, been on developments in the area of JHA, rather than
European security in general. They have also been predominantly
concerned with intra-European relations and have tended not to
consider the growing importance of the ‘internal’ security domain
for the future of EU–US security relations. Some insights with regard
to the relationship between institutionalized cooperation in the
European security field and transatlantic relations have been offered
by several neo-Marxist scholars. Yet they tend to view geo-strategic

Conclusion 157

calculations as driving cooperation. Agency is thus assumed to
belong to states and to be constructed pre-socially. Moreover, their
focus on the political-military field also obscures the way in which
the fight against terrorism is providing a new moral imperative for
transatlantic cooperation in the absence of the traditional threat of
Communism.

In order to capture better the reorientation of EU member states

towards ‘Europe’, I propose an analytical framework that is largely
inspired by the insights of sociological institutionalism and, in
particular, Giddens’ structuration theory. I argue that a sociological-
institutionalist framework would provide the conceptual tools with
which to capture better the co-constitutive character of individual
action and institutions, since institutions are viewed both as the
medium and outcome of individual action. I define institutions in
broad terms to include not only formal rules, procedures, and norms,
but also cognitive and moral templates that frame the construction
of meaning-informing behaviour. Actors are thus understood as
embedded in specific institutional contexts, rendering the formation
of their preferences and interests dependent upon institutions. This
does not exclude purposive action. It simply means that purposive
action is viewed as comprehensible only when the institutional con-
texts of actors are taken into account.

The focus on the co-constitution of agency and institutions helps

to place the emphasis on process, making the object of analysis not
the preferences and interests of states but the process by which they
are constructed. European integration is analysed as a continuous
process structured by institutions rather than an end state arrived at
as a result of the rational pursuit of preferences and interests by states.
It also serves to avoid depicting the state as a unitary actor, since no
prior assumption exists as to which agents and structures are major
players in the constitution of social and political structures. A cluster
of agents specific to certain situations are, instead, the focus of the
analysis. Drawing attention to the institutional ‘embeddedness’ of
actors also helped account for variations in the way in which differ-
ent EU member states respond to pressures resulting from a highly-
institutionalized context, as well as the construction of policies. It thus
draws attention to the way in which responses are highly dependent
upon institutional contexts.

158 Securing Europe

The broad definition of institutions supplied by the structuratonist

framework is also able to accommodate a wider conception of govern-
ance, thereby providing the conceptual tools with which to address
the connection between different levels affecting the European secu-
rity domain as a whole. Put another way, it is able to shed light on
the process of co-determination of national and European-level insti-
tutional orders. For the very same reason, the relationship between
different spheres of social life can also be discerned. Specifically, the
impact of a globalizing economy on institutionalized cooperation
in the field of security can be detected, without assuming a linear
relationship between economic integration and changes in European
security. Instead of emphasizing the more fundamental ensemble
of socio-economic relations that underlie an institutional order,
it adopts an understanding of patterns of economic interaction
as embedded in political institutions. This places the relationship
between individual actors’ interpretations of the world around them
and the constitutive role of institutions at the heart of the analysis.

In order to illuminate further the transformative process under-

way in the area of European security, I employ the specific concept
of Europeanization. Europeanization is defined as a process of con-
struction, diffusion, and institutionalization of formal and informal
rules and procedures, policy paradigms, styles and ways of doing
things, and shared beliefs and norms that are first defined and
consolidated in the making of EU public policy and politics, and
then incorporated into the logic of domestic discourse, identities,
political structures, and public policies. The definition stresses the
making of policy without assuming that there is a coherent layer
of EU decisions that triggers Europeanization at the national level,
thus allowing Europeanization to occur in the absence of pressure
to adapt to EU policy templates, as well as policy construction. It
is therefore deemed capable of encompassing a vertical, top-down
mode of Europeanization, as well as a horizontal one, in which the
cognitive-normative dimension is essential.

Each type of Europeanization examined in the study is linked to

different forms of EU governance. Vertical, top-down Europeanization
was more relevant in circumstances where the supranational institu-
tions of the EU have significant degree of power delegated to them
to ensure that particular policy provisions are implemented. In the
absence of pressure to make particular adjustments to ‘Europe’ at the

Conclusion 159

national level, a horizontal mode of Europeanization took place. This
sort of Europeanization is likely to obtain in policy areas characterized
by intergovernmental cooperation, where, in practice, transnational
policy practitioners constitute the principal actors driving integration.
A third possible type of Europeanization was also identified. This latter
kind was thought most likely to occur during the negotiating phase
of EU policy construction and would likely involve the projection of
national governmental preferences informed by the domestic institu-
tional order of member states.

Because the CFSP, of which the ESDP is a part, and the dimensions

of JHA relevant to the study are characterized by facilitated coop-
eration, i.e. cooperation in the absence of obligatory adaptation, I
suggested that the mode of Europeanization most likely to occur in
these fields would be horizontal. Besides the provisions contained
in the treaties, which are often ambiguous for practical reasons,
interaction is guided by soft law, i.e. agreement reached on the basis
of declarations or rules of conduct that are not legally enforceable.
Given this type of interaction, cooperation is most likely to occur
through learning or changes in the cognitive and normative frame-
works employed by security practitioners. This is likely to involve, for
example, policymakers engaging in a process of defining common
problems and what constitutes best practice in terms of addressing
them, and, in so doing, developing common perceptual schemes
and norms. This type of Europeanization allows for learning to occur
outside the EC/EU framework, or even among a subset of EC/EU
member states. This suggests that the direction of developments in
European security would have been guided less by a series of periodic
summits than by decentralized frameworks for coordination. This is
particularly the case in functional/technical areas. In the absence of
such platforms, policymakers are likely to learn through crisis and
repeated debacles.

The case of the SP posed a different kind of problem than that

of the ESDP and JHA. While the initiative was established within
the framework of the CFSP, it did not constitute a policy area that
would later create pressures requiring adaptation on the part of
EU member states. What was important in the case of the SP was
the impact of the German domestic institutions on the establish-
ment of a common approach to conflict prevention in SEE. Vertical
Europeanization taking place during the construction of the Pact

160 Securing Europe

was, therefore, examined. This implied focusing on the way in which
one set of time-space structures, or institutions, informed the emer-
gence of others.

In examining instances of Europeanization, it is important not to

assume a linear relationship between the emergence of shared rules
or policy at the EU level and changes in domestic policy and prac-
tices. The structurationist framework deployed in the study provided
a means of avoiding this pitfall. Following Giddens, I suggested that
actors’ knowledge should be understood as bounded knowledge to
the extent that the entirety of the conditions informing their behav-
iour is unlikely to be known to them and that the outcome of indi-
viduals’ actions are not always not fully comprehended by the agents
themselves. This, in turn, allows for unconscious effects of engaging
in socially meaningful behaviour to be included in the analysis. This
is especially relevant to the existence of an expansive ‘logic’ that
appears to facilitate institutionalized cooperation in functional areas
of activity, where ‘technical’ issues are often not conceived as being
highly political.

This helps to explain the important role that participants in

decentralized and, in some instances, informal policy arenas play in
the process of Europeanization. Employing a broader definition of
institutions helped to reveal that rather than simply providing an
opportunity for states to pursue their preferences and interests, the
EU governance structure grants transnational security practitioners
a significant role in the integration project and that European inte-
gration is better conceived as an ongoing process than the result of
intergovernmental bargaining. The ESDP, for example, is officially an
inter-governmental policy sphere. However, the technicalities of some
issues have meant that its development has been difficult to direct
from the political level, leading to developments being guided by
various working groups comprised of representatives from the armed
forces and defence ministries of member states. The establishment of
EDA, which represents an effort to construct a more formalized system
of regulation by supporting member states in their development of
capabilities for Petersberg tasks, as well as encouraging closer defence
industrial cooperation, will, moreover, give Brussels-based officials, as
well as representatives from the defence industry and armaments and
research directors, an even greater role in the capabilities-development
mechanism. This suggests the continued growth of a decentralized

Conclusion 161

governance structure. Similarly, cooperation in the area of JHA prior
to the TEU was advanced in informal policy networks, comprising
ministers of justice and ministers of the interior, as well as police chiefs
and working groups comprising mid-level officials focusing on issues
of police and security, free movement of people, judicial co-operation,
and external relations, etc. Again, the formalization of these hori-
zontal, network- or project-oriented governance arrangements by the
TEU and Amsterdam Treaties, as well as the creation of EUROJUST, the
Agency for the Management of Co-operation at the External Border
and an extension of EUROPOL’s competencies following September 11,
has extended the influence of transnational security practitioners.

The way in which the participants of these policy networks have

conceived of ‘problems’ and sought common ‘solutions’ to them,
as well as how they have defined European fields of operation, has
been crucial in directing the development of European security.
Practitioners brought together in these decentralized and/or informal
policy networks were initially concerned with issues that were under-
stood in ‘technical’ terms, reflecting the specific knowledgeability of
these actors. In the case of the ESDP, participants in the Capabilities
Development Mechanism were, for example, concerned with military
planning designed to support the EU in its execution of crisis manage-
ment or, to put it another way, ‘filling the capabilities gap’. Similarly,
practitioners involved in the informal networks preceding the creation
of an area of JHA were preoccupied with ensuring law and order in a
world in which boundaries were perceived as being eroded. Conceiving
of these issues as objective needs of the EU polity necessarily created an
expansive ‘logic’. In the case of the ESDP, developing the capabilities
with which to back up crisis management tasks led to greater accept-
ance of defence industrial cooperation, due to the cost of weapons
systems, for example. With respect to JHA, the removal of internal
border controls led to a series of issues, such as illegal immigration and
organized crime, becoming categorized as security concerns. Due to
the bounded nature of these actors’ knowledge, the full extent of the
outcome of their actions, i.e. the Europeanization of the security state,
would not have been fully comprehended by them. Their concerns
were to respond to the ‘objective needs’ of the emerging EU polity.

This tends to support the neo-functionalist claim that uncontro-

versial, ‘technical’ tasks play an important role in driving European
integration forward. In particular, it suggests that the framing of

162 Securing Europe

issues as ‘technical’, ‘objective needs’ does create a type of ‘spill-over’
effect, though this would only apply in more functional areas of EU
politics. Yet, neo-functionalism would have led us to expect that this
expansive ‘logic’ is due to key groups seeking to influence a regional
authority. The actions driving integration would, therefore, have
been conceived as purposive and inspired by individual or group
perceptions of interest rather than conceptions of the ‘common
good’. While it is certainly the case that actions taken by participants
of informal and/or decentralized policy networks were, of course,
purposive, the expansive ‘logic’ was also in large part the result of
the unconscious effects of engaging in socially meaningful behaviour.
This requires a different conception of the motivations of individuals/
groups, one that allows for the structuring qualities of institutions
rather than the one employed by neo-functionalism.

It is important to note that even in functional areas re-orientation

towards ‘Europe’ was not really perceptible until issues were defined
as common, European problems. In the case of the ESDP, this was espe-
cially notable during the capabilities improvement process, particu-
larly during the second phase when perceptions of the international
security environment and the EU’s role within it began to make its
way into the capabilities improvement process and the subsequent
deployment of resources at the national level. The transformations
that took place in the field of JHA throughout the 1990s, affecting
other areas of state activity also considered vital to state sovereignty,
such as policing and justice, have come about as ‘internal’ security
challenges and have been conceived as common, European security
risks. Throughout this period, terrorism was not identified as a threat
common to all EU member states, since terrorist activities were
mostly aimed at altering individual governments’ policies during this
period. The result was slow progress in the area of criminal justice
and intelligence cooperation. September 11 and subsequent attacks –
thus crisis situations – led, however, to the formulation of a com-
mon definition of terrorism. This enabled further cooperation in the
area of criminal law and intelligence, in particular, to take place. The
resulting cooperation between EU member states in the area of ‘inter-
nal’ security is altering the meaning and application of law enforce-
ment and criminal justice within EU member states. Conceptions of
the ‘common good’ were thus crucial to Europeanization in these
policy areas.

Conclusion 163

The establishment of the SP demonstrated this co-determining

aspect of Europeanization further. The SP and thus the EU’s new
approach to SEE were heavily informed by the knowledgeability and
identity of German security practitioners. Its creation therefore rep-
resented a case of vertical, bottom-up Europeanization. The commit-
ment to a European approach to foreign and security policy issues, the
preference for restraint in the use of force in conflict resolution, the
goal of multilateral cooperation, as well as a strong value-based orien-
tation – all of which played a part in establishing the Pact – reflected
Germany’s collective identity vis-à-vis the European integration proc-
ess and its strategic culture. Germany’s status as a Europeanized state
par excellence, moreover, informed not only the spirit of the Pact, but
also the manner in which it was brought about. Practitioners’ under-
standings of how to ‘go about things’, informed by the preference for
multilateralism and European ‘solutions’, were particularly important
in guiding German practitioners in the direction of compromise and
consensus-seeking, ultimately enabling the Pact to be agreed.

The broader institutional contexts of actors, i.e. those linked

to different levels and spheres of social life, captured by the con-
cept of bounded knowledgeability, were also found to be crucial
to Europeanization. In the case of the ESDP, a number of factors
linked to the broader economic and political environment clearly
influenced security practitioners’ thinking. The end of the Cold
War prompted a reformulation of security policies in EU member
states that was favourable to their reorientation towards ‘Europe’. In
the area of JHA, the redefinition of the ‘internal’ security functions
of member states during the 1990s was connected to fears about
‘floods of immigrants’ following the end of the Cold War. As pointed
out, the creation of the Pact was, however, not solely related to
the specific institutional context of German practitioners. Changes
occurring in relation to other international actors during the 1990s,
particularly in the development donor community, were also impor-
tant in enabling the incorporation of a multilateral dimension to the
EU’s initiative. In particular, the concept of security sector reform,
which united security and development concerns, shared common
ground with the connection being made between stabilization and
enlargement in the EU’s direct relations with SEE countries.

Finally, deploying a structurationist framework to examine devel-

opments in European security supplied a different way of viewing

164 Securing Europe

their significance for transatlantic security relations. Contrary to
what accounts of the significance of the ESDP for EU–US security
relations would suggest, European efforts to improve military capac-
ity are not best understood in terms of balancing behaviour. While
endowing the EU with military capabilities with which to undertake
missions independently of NATO will have the effect of eroding the
US monopoly on political decision-making within the Atlantic area,
the process of Europeanizing military security has more to do with
institutional contexts of practitioners, particularly those active in
decentralized policy networks, than the balancing behaviour states.
Another reason to be cautious about viewing the ESDP as a counter-
weight to the US/NATO is that cooperation between NATO and the
EU in the context of the capabilities development mechanism, as well
as operations, implies that evolution of the ESDP will also be influ-
enced by the US and NATO institutional order. Similarly, in the case
of the SP, the shift in the EU’s approach to SEE is better understood as
the result of the institutional contexts of German security practition-
ers and modifications in the agendas of other international actors
rather than as the result of the desire to balance the US in SEE.

When the role of decentralized policy networks and institutions are

taken into account, it is possible to identify the way in which increased
and formalized intra-European cooperation in the areas of law enforce-
ment, intelligence, and border controls is shifting EU member states’
relations with the US. As den Boer has noted, ‘[i]t is clear that the
transatlantic axis against terrorism has opened the EU-door to the
USA far more widely than before, and that there is a spill-over from
terrorism to other security or mobility related issues. Border controls,
criminal justice co-operation, immigration and asylum policy have
thus become elements inserted in a wider transatlantic security policy
continuum.’

In effect, it has further unlocked an abundant area of

transatlantic collaboration – one that is likely to expand with a ‘trans-
atlantic internal security continuum’. The interaction between the EU
and US law enforcement agents, in particular, should be the object
of further scrutiny, though a certain degree of uneasiness in Europe
is nevertheless likely to remain, due to the differences in emphasis,
demonstrated by recent controversy over CIA cooperation with EU
member states’ intelligence services.

The study therefore suggests that Europeanization in relation

to the ESDP and JHA has been driven less by a series of periodic,

Conclusion 165

intergovernmental summits than by the participants in decentral-
ized and/or informal policy arenas. Employing a broad definition of
institutions demonstrates that the EU governance structure grants
transnational security practitioners a central role in guiding the inte-
gration project, particularly in functional areas. Specifically, the way
in which the participants of these policy networks conceived of ‘prob-
lems’ and how they sought common ‘solutions’ to them was vital to
creating an expansive ‘logic’ as additional ‘objective needs’ were iden-
tified and boundaries between issues were collapsed. In terms of the
modification of the ‘rules’ (perceptual schemes and norms), however,
the definition of these issues as common, European security questions
was vital in Europeanizing national security apparatuses. The process
of Europeanization has, therefore, a co-determining dimension. The
structuring qualities of the broader environment, captured by the
concept of bounded knowledgeability, also contributed to the process
of Europeanization. Employing a structurationist framework of analy-
sis also suggested that the efforts of Europeans to improve crisis man-
agement and conflict prevention capacities are not best conceived
as balancing behaviour vis-à-vis the US/NATO, but the results of the
co-determing of EU and national institutional contexts.

In order to provide a more complete picture of how specific insti-

tutional contexts produce variations in the responses of individual
EU states to policy initiatives, one should inquire at the level of
each service of each bureaucracy in each country to understand how
‘rules’ develop and change occurs. Undertaking such research would
also help to illustrate that Europeanization does not necessarily
imply convergence, thereby contributing to our understanding of
European integration as a continual work in progress.

Similarly, further examination of the institutional embeddedness of

the participants in these networks and how they influence outcomes
should be carried out. For example, in relation to the development of
the ESDP, closer research ought to be done on the interplay between
various networks consisting of parts of the Commission, the Council,
the European Parliament (EP), the WEU, NATO, and the European
defence industry in order to understand how issues enter the dis-
course on the ESDP. Similar work should also be carried out in rela-
tion to increasing cooperation and integration in the field of JHA. The
importance of largely de-politicized ‘technical’ issues in creating an
expansive ‘logic’ in particular policy areas also merits further study.

166 Securing Europe

Greater attention needs to be paid to the inter-play between the

external EU environment and its internal dynamics. In relation to
the changes in the transatlantic relationship, a more detailed study of
the development of rules and linkages between the US and European
militaries and defence officials, as well as the impact of NATO officials’
participation in the capabilities process, deserves further enquiry. This
kind of examination would furnish a more adequate understanding
of the way in which and the extent to which the US is able to influ-
ence the construction of the ESDP, despite the fact that the ESDP
implies greater formal autonomy in terms of operations.

With regards to developments in the area of JHA, further consid-

eration of previous and present day cooperation between the US
and EU law enforcement agencies, as well as intelligence officials
and representatives from respective judiciaries, is also called for. As
with the ESDP, these kinds of linkages indicate that developments in
European security should not be viewed as providing a counterweight
to the US. While they give EU member states a greater capacity to
respond to identified security challenges, they are intimately tied to
developments in US security policy and relevant institutions, and we
should be aware of this for the sake of accountability as well as the
comprehension of developments in European security.

167

Notes

167

1 Introduction

1. T. Garton Ash, ‘This Is Not Only a French Crisis – All of Europe Must Heed

the Flames’, The Guardian, 10 November 2005.

2. Council of the European Union, ‘A Secure Europe in a Better World,

European Security Strategy’, Brussels, 12 December 2003.

3. The 1992 Treaty of European Union contained provisions for a com-

mon foreign and security policy, though the CFSP is the product of a
long evolution.

4. The European military entity prior to its incorporation into the EU

structure.

5. J. Sperling and E. Kirchner (1997) Recasting the European Order: Security

Architectures and Economic Cooperation (Manchester & New York: Manchester
University Press), 32–3.

6. Council of the European Union, ‘A Secure Europe in a Better World’.
7. The most striking example of what this implied for European states is in the

field of signals intelligence (SIGINT). Under the 1947 UKUSA Agreement,
to which Australia, Canada and New Zealand were also signatories,
Britain’s SIGINT organization, Government Communications Headquarters
(GCHQ), was formally integrated into a global surveillance network. In
addition to providing a division of SIGINT collection, the Agreement also
institutionalized American leadership within the surveillance network.
Under the Agreement, the United States’ four original partners, including
Britain, appear as second parties; whereas NATO members that signed at a
later date, including Denmark, Germany, Greece, Italy and Norway, did so
as third parties. The Agreement also served to institutionalize the presence
of American facilities, directly managed by the National Security Agency
(NSA), on British and German territories. European countries participating
in the surveillance network were, moreover, obliged to adopt American
security standards. See J. Richelson (1990) ‘The Calculus of Intelligence
Cooperation’, International Journal of Intelligence and Counterintelligence,
Vol. 4, No. 3, 227–8; Whitaker, R. (1992) ‘Security and Intelligence in the
Post-Cold War World’, in R. Milliband and L. Panitch (eds) New World
Order? The Socialist Register 1992 (London: Merlin Press), 119; D. Campbell
(2001) Surveillance Electronique Planetaire (Paris: Editions Allia), 21.

8. European states were not integrated into the Atlantic security network

on the same basis or to the same extent. Among European states, Britain
enjoyed (and, to great extent, still does) a privileged status and, as a result,
developed particularly intimate military and intelligence links with the
US. The armed forces of Britain and the US have developed close relations

168 Securing Europe

over the years. Britain and the US are also engaged in a number of collabo-
rative weapons projects – both conventional and nuclear. The so-called
special relationship is, however, at its strongest in the area of intelligence.
In addition to their relations in SIGINT, there is a great deal of coopera-
tion between the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) and the Foreign and
Commonwealth Office Secret Intelligence Service (MI6) in the field of
human intelligence (HUMINT); between America’s Defence Intelligence
Agency and the British Defence Intelligence Staff on defence intelligence;
and between America’s National Reconnaissance Office and Britain’s
Joint Aerial Reconnaissance Intelligence Centre (JARIC) on ‘overhead’
intelligence from satellite data, reconnaissance aircraft and unmanned
aerial vehicles (UAVs). This especially close relationship has led to similar
practices and positions, and to a deeper level of US technological develop-
ments and capabilities compared to other European states.

In stark contrast, France remained on the periphery of the Atlantic
security network and a rigorous critic of institutionalized American
hegemony in Europe, particularly during the late 1960s. The French gov-
ernment’s 1966 withdrawal of France from NATO’s integrated military
structure and rapprochement with Moscow represented a direct chal-
lenge to NATO’s legitimacy as an instrument for stability in Europe.

This, combined with Germany’s Ostpolitik, which was launched in
1967 and premised on establishing long-term cooperation agreements
between East and West as a way of forcing ‘normalcy’ on socialist
states, severely strained Atlantic unity under American leadership. See
C. Grant (2000) ‘Intimate Relations: Can Britain Play a Leading Role
in European Defence – and Keep Its Links to US Intelligence?’ CER
Working Paper, 2; A. Wenger (2004) ‘Crisis and Opportunity: NATO and
the Miscalculation of Détente, 1966–1968’, Journal of Cold War Studies
Vol. 6, No. 1, 22–74; K. van der Pijl (1984) The Making of an Atlantic
Ruling Class (London: Verso), 252–3.

9. G. L. Williams and B. J. Jones (2001) NATO and the Transatlantic Alliance in

the 21st Century: The Twenty-Year Crisis (Basingstoke and New York: Palgrave
Macmillan), 32–3; 35; 40; 42.

10. A. Eriksson (2004) ‘The Building of a EU Capability – A Process of

Europeanisation’, paper presented at the Fifth Pan-European Conference
of the Standing Group on International Relations, The Hague, The
Netherlands, 9–11 September; S. Duke (2000) The Elusive Quest for European
Security: From EDC to CFSP (Basingstoke and London: Macmillan Press Ltd.;
New York: St. Martin’s Press); J. Sperling and E. Kirchner (1997) Recasting the
European Order: Security Architectures and Economic Cooperation (Manchester
and New York: Manchester University Press); Also see L. Watanabe (2004)
‘European Security in an American Era: Between Estrangement and a New
Partnership’, in A. Howell (ed.) Governance and Global (Dis)orders: Trends,
Transformations and Impasses. Selected Proceedings of the Eleventh Annual
Conference of the Centre for International Security Studies in conjunction with the
Fourth Annual Conference of the Nathanson Centre for the Study of Organized

Notes 169

Crime and Corruption (Toronto: Centre for International Security Studies,
York University), 81–124.

11. Anderson, M. (2000) ‘Counterterrorism as an Objective of European Police

Cooperation’, in F. Reinares (ed.) European Democracies against Terrorism:
Governmental Policies and Intergovernmental Cooperation (Aldershot: Ashgate
Dartmouth), 227–43; D. Bigo (1994) ‘The European Internal Security Field:
Stakes and Rivalries in a Newly Developing Area of Police Intervention’,
in M. Anderson and M. den Boer (eds) Policing Across National Boundaries
(London and New York: Pinter Publishers), 161–73.

2 A Sociological Institutionalist Approach
to Europeanization

1. C. Layne (2001) ‘Death Knell for NATO? The Bush Administration

Confronts the European Security and Defence Policy’, Policy Analysis,
No. 394, 8.

2. G. Bono (2002) ‘European Security and Defence Policy: Theoretical

approaches, the Nice Summit and Hot Issues’, Research and Training
Network: Bridging the Accountability Gap in European Security
and Defence Policy (ESDP)/ESDP and Democracy, 6; A. Hurrell and
A. Menon (2003) ‘International Relations, International Institutions,
and the European State’, in J. Hayward and A. Menon (ed.) Governing
Europe (Oxford: Oxford University Press), 40; J. Mearsheimer (1990) ‘Back
to the Future: Instability in Europe after the Cold War’, International
Security, Vol. 15, No. 1, 5–56; K. Waltz (1993) ‘The Emerging Structure of
International Politics’, International Security, Vol. 18, No. 1.

3. S. Jones (2007) The Rise of European Security Cooperation (Cambridge:

Cambridge University Press).

4. Ibid., 23.
5. L. Panitch and S. Gindin (2003) ‘Global Capitalism and American

Empire’, in L. Panitch and C. Leys (eds) The New Imperial Challenge: The
Socialist Register 2004 (London: Merlin Press), 13; Gowan, P. (2003) ‘The
American Campaign for Global Sovereignty’, in L. Panitch and C. Leys
(eds) Fighting Identities: Race, Religion and Ethno-nationalism: The Socialist
Register 2003 (London: Merlin Press), 1–27.

6. M. Webber (2007) Inclusion, Exclusion and the Governance of European

Security (Manchester and New York: Manchester University Press), 51.

7. Hurrell and Menon, ‘International Relations, International Institutions’,

407.

8. See, for example, F. Heisbourg (1992) ‘The European-US Alliance:

Valedictory Reflections on Continental Drift in the Post-Cold War Era’,
International Affairs, Vol. 68, No. 4, 665–78; K. Schake (2003) ‘The United
States, the ESDP and Constructive Duplication’ CER Working Paper. For
transatlantic relations, see A. Moens (1992) ‘Behind Complementary
Transparency: The Politics of European Security and Defence Identity’,

170 Securing Europe

Journal of European Integration, XVI, 1, 29–48; A. Moens (1998) ‘NATO’s
Dilemma and the Elusive European Defence Identity’, Security Dialogue,
Vol. 29, No. 4, 463–75; Layne, ‘Death Knell for NATO?’

9. Among such analyses, a number of causal factors are regularly identified.

The Kosovo war is frequently cited as turning point for Europeans vis-à-
vis the military dimension of European integration. For some authors,
the war is attributed a major explanatory role. In particular, the way in
which it exposed the size of the gap between Europeans and the US in the
area of capabilities, responsibilities and in strategic priorities is stressed.
According to such accounts, Europeans were resentful of the minimal
influence they were able to bring to bear upon the operation, leading some
policymakers to believe that a more assertive Europe, and hence a more
balanced Alliance, would have been in a position to promote strategy that
was better than the American one. Other observers, such as P. Latawski
and M. A. Smith (2003) The Kosovo Crisis and the Evolution of Post-Cold
War European Security (Manchester and New York: Manchester University
Press), Chapter 2, see it as a ‘permissive facilitator’ rather than a chief
causal factor. See, in particular, J. Howorth (2002) ‘The European Security
Conundrum: Prospects for the ESDP after September 11, 2001’, Notre
Europe Policy Paper, http://www.notre-europe.asso.fr. For many analysts,
the most significant catalyst for the development of the ESDP was the
change in British policy determined by the desire to assert British leader-
ship with regard to EU military affairs, and France’s earlier dissatisfaction
with the failure of NATO and the US, as French leaders saw it, to concede a
sufficient degree of autonomy to the Alliance’s European members. These
together are thought to have culminated in the St Malo Declaration. See
Howorth, ‘The European Security Conundrum’; Latawski and Smith, The
Kosovo Crisis and the Evolution of Post-Cold War European Security.

10. Ibid., 19.
11. See B. Rosamond (2000) Theories of European Integration (Basingstoke:

Palgrave Macmillan).

12. Ibid., 60.
13. E. Haas (1958) The Uniting of Europe: Political, Social and Economic Forces,

1950–57 (London: Stevens and Sons Limited), 17.

14. M. Smith (2004) ‘Beyond the Stable State? Foreign Policy Challenges and

Opportunities in the New Europe’, in W. Carlsnoes and S. Smith (eds)
European Foreign Policy: The EC and Changing Perspectives in Europe (Sage
Publications), 28.

15. L. Hooge and G. Marks (2001) Multi-level Governance and European

Integration (Lanham: Rowman and Littlefield Publishers), xi.

16. Ibid., 2–3.
17. Ibid., 36.
18. Ibid., 39.
19. Ibid., 25.
20. M. E. Smith (2004) Europe’s Foreign and Security Policy: The Institutionalization

of Cooperation (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press), 11, 17–8.

Notes 171

21. Ibid., 25–6.
22. Ibid., 33–4.
23. Webber, Inclusion, Exclusion and the Governance of European Security,

58–9, 62–3.

24.  Ibid., 63–4, 66, 69–70.
25.  Ibid., 126, 129, 131.
26.  See especially L. Panitch (2000) ‘The New Imperial State’, New Left Review,

2 and Panitch and Gindin, ‘Global Capitalism and American Empire’.

27. L. Panitch (2002) ‘Violence as a Tool of Order and Change: The War

on Terrorism and the Anti-Globalisation Movement’, revised version
of a Keynote Speech to the Conference Protest, Freedom and Order in
Canada: Finding the Right Balance, Institute for Research on Public Affairs,
Concordia University, Montreal, 11–12 March, 13.

28.  Gowan, ‘The American Campaign for Global Sovereignty’, 16.
29. Ibid., 1.
30. Ibid., 2.
31. Ibid., 8.
32.  Gowan, ‘The American Campaign for Global Sovereignty’, 11.
33.  Van der Pijl, ‘Atlantic Rivalries and the Collapse of the USSR’, 199.
34.  Hurrell and Menon, ‘International Relations, International Institutions’,

407–8.

35. Cafruny, A. W. (2003) ‘The Geopolitics of US Hegemony in Europe: From

the Break-up of Yugoslavia to the War in Iraq’, in A. W. Cafruny and
M. Ryner (eds) A Ruined Fortress? Neoliberal Hegemony and Transformation in
Europe (Lanham: Rowman and Littlefield Publishers), especially 95–104.

36. G. Lindstrom (2006) ‘The Headline Goal’, http://www.weltpolitik.net/

attachment/0644a930ba1074b5cca2acd4809cbed5/48828aaa68afabfba
388490f841bc996/05-gl.pdf, 2.

37. For a detailed discussion of the various strands of new institutionalist

thought, see P. Hall and R. Taylor (1996) ‘Political Science and the Three
New Institutionalisms’, Max-Planck-Institut für Gesellschaftsforschung
Discussion Paper, No. 6.

38. Ibid., 12–13.
39. Theda Skocpol’s book, State and Social Revolutions: A Comparative Analysis

of France, Russia and China (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press,
1979), constitutes one of the most important work’s in the ‘bringing the
state back in’ school. Also see P. Evans (1995) Embedded Autonomy: States
and Industrial Transformation (Princeton: Princeton University Press).

40. Thelen and Steinmo, ‘Historical Institutionalism in Comparative Politics’, 7.
41. See M. Konings (2005) ‘Political Institutions and Economic Imperatives:

Bringing Agency Back In’, RIPE 22.

42. B. Rosamond (2000) Theories of European Integration (Basingstoke: Palgrave

Macmillan), 5.

43. Ibid., 114.
44. P. Hall and R. Taylor (1996) ‘Political Science and the Three

New Institutionalisms’, Max-Planck-Institut für Gesellschaftsforschung

172 Securing Europe

Discussion Paper 96/6, 6–16; Rosamond, Theories of European Integration,
113–16, 119.

45. Hall and Taylor, ‘Political Science and the Three New Institutionalisms’, 10.
46. Ibid.; W. W. Powell (1991) ‘Expanding the Scope of Institutional Analysis’,

in W. W. Powell and P. J. DiMaggio (eds) The New Intitutionalism in
Organizational Analysis (Chicago and London: The University of Chicago
Press), 200.

47. R. Friedland and R. R. Alford (1991) ‘Bring Society Back In: Symbols,

Practices and Institutional Contradiction’, in Powell and DiMaggio (eds)
The New Institutionalism in Organizational Analysis, 244–7.

48. Leander, A. (2000) ‘A Nebbish Presence: Undervalued Contributions

of Sociological Institutionalism to IPE’, in R. Palan (ed.) Global Political
Economy: Contemporary Theories (London and New York: Routledge), 187–8.

49. A. Giddens (1984) The Constitution of Society: Outline of the Theory of

Structuration (Cambridge: Polity Press), 5.

50. Giddens, The Constitution of Society, 2, 5–6, 25–6, 29–30, 33.
51. Ibid., 257.
52.  Ibid., 258, 260.
53.  Ibid., xxxi, 17–18, 23–4, 30, 282.
54.  Ibid., 288, 328–9, 304.
55.  E. M. Immergut (1998) ‘The Theoretical Core of New Institutionalism’,

Politics & Society, Vol. 26, No.1, 22.

56. Giddens, The Constitution of Society, xxxi, 251.
57. S. Bulmer (1997) New Institutionalism, the Single Market and EU Governance,

ARENA Working Paper, No. 25, www.arena.uio.no/publications/
wp97_25.htm 17/08/2004,7–8; G. Schneider and M. Aspinwall (2001)
‘Institutional Research on the European Union: Mapping the Field’, in
G. Schneider and M. Aspinwall (ed.) The Rules of Integration: Institutionalist
Approaches to the Study of Europe (Manchester and New York: Manchester
University Press), 1.

58. Rosamond, Theories of European Integration, 118; See, for instance, S. Bulmer’s

major case study on the establishment of the Single European Market.

59. S. Bulmer and M. Burch (2001) ‘The “Europeanisation” of Central

Government: The UK and Germany in Historical Institutionalist
Perspective’, in G. Schneider and M. Aspinwall (eds)  The Rules of
Integration: Institutionalist Approaches to the Study of Europe  (Manchester
and New York: Manchester University Press), 73–4. For an example of
reflective approaches, see T. Christiansen and K. E. Jorgensen (1999) ‘The
Amsterdam Process: A Structurationist Perspective on EU Treaty Reform’,
European Integration Online Papers  3, No. 1, http://eiop.or.at/eiop/, 1-23;
C. Hay and B. Rosamond (2001) ‘Globalisation, European Integration
and the Discursive Construction of Economic Imperatives: A Question of
Convergence?’ Queen’s Papers on Europeanisation 1, http://eiop.or./at/erpa/
queens.htm for an emphasis on the employment of discourses.

60. Hay and Rosamond, ‘Globalisation, European Integration and the

Discursive Construction of Economic Imperatives.’

Notes 173

61. See Christiansen and Jorgensen, ‘The Amsterdam Process’.
62. Ibid., 17.
63. C. Radaelli (2003) ‘The Europeanization of Public Policy’, in

K. Featherstone and C. Raedelli (eds) The Politics of Europeanization
(Oxford: Oxford University Press), 30–4.

64. Quoted in R. Ladrech (2001) ‘Europeanisation and Political Parties:

Towards a Framework for Analysis’, Queen’s Papers on Europeanisation 2, 3.

65. Quoted in K. Featherstone (2003) ‘Introduction: In the Name of ‘Europe’,

in K. Featherstone and C. M. Radaelli (eds) The Politics of Europeanization
(Oxford: Oxford University Press), 17.

66. S. Bulmer and C. M. Radaelli (2004) ‘The Europeanisation of National

Policy?’ Queen’s Papers on Europeanisation 1, http://eiop.or./at/erpa/queens
.htm.

67. K. E. Howell (2004) ‘Developing Conceptualisations of Europeanization:

Synthesising Methodological Approaches’, Queen’s Papers on Europeanization
3, http://eiop.or./at/erpa/queens.htm.

68. Giddens, The Constitution of Society, 281–2.
69. Ibid., xxxi, 2, 24–6.
70. Radaelli, C. M. (2003) ‘The Europeanization of Public Policy’, in

K. Featherstone and C. M. Radaelli (eds) The Politics of Europeanization
(Oxford: Oxford University Press), 50–1.

3 The European Security and Defence Policy

1. J.-Y. Haine (2004) ‘An Historical Perspective’, in N. Gnesotto (ed.) EU Security

and Defence Policy: The First Five Years (1999–2004) (Paris: EUISS), 37–8.

2. The Second Pillar of the European Union is intergovernmental as opposed

to supranational in nature.

3. The German Federal Ministry of Foreign Affairs (2009), ‘European

Security and Defence Policy (ESDP)’, http://www.auswaertiges-amt.de,
date accessed 21 March 2009.

4. C

I represents command, control, communication, computers and

intelligence.

5. O. R. Villadsen (2000) ‘Prospects for a European Common Intelligence

Policy’, CIA Report, 2.

6. In response to perceived shortfalls during the 1991 Gulf War, France spear-

headed the Hélios project, which represented a significant leap forward in
Europe’s imagery intelligence capabilities. Hélios 1 comprises two satellites,
which were developed by the former Matra Marconi Space for the French
armaments agency and co-funded by Italy and Spain – each holding 14 and
7 percent shares, respectively. Hélios 1 was launched in 1995 and has since
contributed satellite imagery to the three funding states, as well as to that
of the WEU. Despite Hélios 1’s contribution to European imagery capabili-
ties, it cannot cut through cloud cover and lacks radar and infrared capa-
bilities. This has led to the development of Hélios 2 – a French-led follow

174 Securing Europe

up to Hélios 1 –, which includes infrared as well as electro-optical imaging
capabilities. France attempted to get Germany involved in this project in
return for French investment in Germany’s cloud-piercing Horus radar
observation satellite programme. According to Charles Grant, the Clinton
Administration tried to thwart these plans by trying to persuade Germany
to buy an off-the-shelf Lockheed spy satellite rather than invest in Hélios 2.
Kohl decided to support the French programme, because the French
promised unlimited access to satellite imagery, whereas the US would have
pre-selected the photos. However, German budgetary constraints, as well
as concerns about the implications of these programmes for relations with
US/NATO, caused Germany to pull out of the Hélios 2 programme a few
years later and to abandon Horus altogether. See C. Grant (2000) ‘Intimate
Relations: Can Britain Play a Leading Role in European Defence – and
Keep Its Links to US Intelligence?’ CER Working Paper, 11; M. R. Gueldry
(2001) France and European Integration: Towards a Transnational Polity? (West
Point and London: Praeger), 169; S. Gregory (2000) French Defence Policy
into the Twenty-First Century (Basingstoke: Macmillan Press Ltd.; New York:
St. Martin’s Press, LLC), 139; Villadsen, Prospects for a European Common
Intelligence Policy, 6.

7. Grant, ‘Intimate Relations’, 11.
8. S. Gregory (2000) French Defence Policy into the Twenty-First Century

(Basingstoke: Macmillan Press Ltd; New York: St. Martin’s Press, LLC),
140; Villadsen, Prospects for a European Common Intelligence Policy, 17–8.

9. Gregory, ibid., 140; Villadsen, ibid., 8; Keohane (2003), ‘Making Progress

in Space – The European Union’s Final Frontier’, EuropeanVoice.com,:
www.cer.org.uk, 1–2.

10. S. P. Davis (2003) ‘The Long-term Outlook for NATO and the ESDP’, in

J. Krause, A. Wenger and L. Watanabe (eds) Unraveling the European
Security and Defense Policy Conundrum (Bern, etc.: Peter Lang), 213.

11 J. Howorth (2002) ‘The European Security Conundrum: Prospects for

the ESDP after September 11, 2001’, Notre Europe Policy Paper, http://
www.notre-europe.asso.fr.

12. Established in 1992, Eurocorps comprises military contributions from

its five framework nations: Belgium, France, Germany, Luxembourg,
and Spain. For further information, visit the Eurocorps website (http://
www.eurocorps.org).

13. Bono, G. (2003) ‘Implementing the Headline Goals: The Institutional

Dimension’, in J. Krause, A. Wenger and L. Watanabe (eds) Unraveling the
European Security and Defence Policy Conundrum (Bern, etc.: Peter Lang,
2003), 28.

14. Howorth, ‘The European Security Conundrum’, 2.; UK official 2003 L,

interview, 11 December 2003.

15. Declaration of the European Council on Strengthening the Common

European Policy on Security and Defence, European Council, Cologne,
3–4 June 1999.

16. Davis, ‘The Long-term Outlook for NATO and the ESDP’, 215.

Notes 175

17. Cited in Haine, ‘An Historical Perspective’, 44.
18. C. V. Balis (2003) ‘The State of the European Defense and Security Policy

after the Leaken Summit’, in J. Krause, A. Wenger and L. Watanabe (eds)
Unraveling the European Security and Defense Policy Conundrum, 26.

19. B. Schmitt (2004) ‘European Capabilities: How Many Divisions?’, in

N. Gnesotto (ed.) EU Security and Defence Policy: The First Five Years (1999–
2004) (Paris: EUISS), 91.

20. The PSC comprises representatives at senior ambassadorial level and

one representative from the Commission. It prepares policy options in
anticipation of events and is charged with the strategic direction and
political control of EU activities in crisis situations. Its definition within
the Treaty effectively replaces previous references to the WEU’s Political
Committee.

21. Bono, ‘Implementing the Headline Goals’, 70.
22. A. Missiroli (2004) ‘ESDP – How It Works’, in N. Gnesotto (ed.) EU Security

and Defence Policy, 57.

23. Ibid., 59.
24. Brussels official 2006, interview, 10 October.
25. A. Eriksson (2004) ‘The Building of a EU Capability – A Process of

Europeanisation’, paper presented at the Fifth Pan-European Conference
of the Standing Group on International Relations, The Hague, The
Netherlands, 9–11 September, 11.

26. Brussels official 2006, interview, 10 October.
27. Haine, ‘An Historical Perspective’, 45–6; Schmitt, ‘European

Capabilities’, 92.

28.  Schmitt, ‘European Capabilities’, 93.
29. Ibid., 93–4.
30.  Brussels official 2006, interview, 10 October.
31.  Eriksson, ‘The Building of a EU Military Capability’.
32.  Brussels official 2006, interview, 10 October.
33.  Schmitt, ‘European Capabilities’, 95.
34.  RELEX refers to the Commission’s External Relations Directorate General

and COREPER to the Committee of Permanent Representatives.

35. Council Joint Action on the Establishment of the European Defence

Agency, 12 July 2004; In addition to attempting to establish a common
set of rules for cooperation, a Franco-German inspired joint programme
management agency – the Joint Armaments Co-operation Organisation
(otherwise known by the French Acronym (OCCAR) – was established.
OCCAR was directed at improving the efficiency of joint European pro-
curement by establishing one set of guidelines for joint programmes,
giving participating firms a central reference point instead of several
national teams. While many of OCCAR-managed programmes have been
Franco-German, Britain is involved, along with France and Germany, in
a cobra programme to produce a long-range battlefield radar, and has
also joined forces with Germany and the Netherlands on a multi-role
armoured vehicle programme (MRAV). See Schmitt (2002) ‘European

176 Securing Europe

and Transatlantic Defence-Industrial Strategies’, paper prepared for the
IISS/CEPS European Security Forum, Brussels, 25 November, www.iiss
.org/eusec, 36; D. Keohane (2002) ‘The EU and Armaments Co-operation’,
CER Working Paper, 24.

36.  Eriksson, ‘The Building of an EU Military Capability’, 13–14.
37.  Schmitt, ‘European Capabilities’, 101.
38.  Brussels official 2006, interview, 10 October.
39.  Brussels official 2006, interview, 10 October.
40.  Joint Action on the Establishment of the Agency.
41.  Brussels official 2006, interview, 10 October.
42.  Brussels official 2006, interview, 10 October.
43.  Eriksson, ‘The Building of a EU Military Capability’, 13–14.
44.  D. Keohane (2004) ‘Europe’s New Defence Agency’, CER Policy Brief, 4;

Research for a Secure Europe (2004) Report of the Group of Personalities in
the Field of Security Research. Luxembourg: Office of Official Publications
of the European Communities, 7.

45. See Council of the European Union, ‘A Secure Europe in a Better World,

European Security Strategy’, Brussels, 12 December 2003.

46.  Eriksson, ‘The Building of a EU Military Capability’, 11.
47.  Headline Goal 2010.
48. Ibid., 2010.
49.  Schmitt, ‘European Capabilities’, 98–9; Eriksson, ‘The Building of a EU

Military Capability’, 10; EU Council Secretariat, ‘EU Battlegroups’, EU
Council Secretariat Fact Sheet, February 2007, 1.

50. Brussels diplomat 2003, interview, 23 October; German official 2004,

interview, 16 April; British official 2003, interview, 11 December.

51.  Keohane, ‘The EU and Armaments Co-operation’.
52.  Eriksson, ‘The Building of a Military Capability’, 14, 17.
53.  See P. Stuck, German Defence Minister (2003) ‘Defence Policy Guidelines’,

Berlin, 21 May, 4–7, 10, 11–14.

54. German Federal Ministry of Defence (2006), White Paper 2006 on German

Security Policy and the Future of the Bundeswehr.

55. French Ministry of Defence, The Military Programme Bill of Law 2003–

2008, 3 of Chapter 3.

56.  Ibid., 3, Chapter 1.
57.  Ibid., 4, Chapter 3.
58.  Ibid., 80, Chapter 4.
59.  D. Keohane 2003, interview, 17 December.
60.  British Ministry of Defence (2003) Delivering Security in a Changing World,

Defence White Paper, 2–3.

61. Ibid., 3
62. Research for a Secure Europe, 13.
63. Ibid., 7.
64. See U. Mörth (1999) ‘Framing the Defence Industry Equipment Issue –

The Case of the European Commission’, SCORE Report, No. 1.

65. Ibid.

Notes 177

66. Gaffney, J. (2005) ‘Highly Emotional States: French-US Relations and

the Iraq War’, in K. Longhurst and M. Zaborowski (eds) Old Europe,
New Europe and the Transatlantic Security Agenda (London and New York:
Routledge), 77.

67. P. Latawski and M. A. Smith (2003) The Kosovo Crisis and the Evolution of

Post-Cold War European Security (Manchester and New York: Manchester
University Press), 136.

68. See Howorth, ‘The European Security Conundrum’.
69. Miskimmon, A. (2005) ‘Continuity in the Face of Upheaval – British

Strategic Culture and the Impact of the Blair Government’, in K. Longhurst
and M. Zaborowski (eds) Old Europe, New Europe and the Transatlantic
Security Agenda (London and New York: Routledge), 87–8.

70. Latawski and Smith, The Kosovo Crisis and the Evolution of Post-Cold War

European Security, 126; British official 2003, December 11.

71.  Brussels diplomat 2003, interview, 23 October.
72.  Miskimmon, ‘Continuity in the Face of Upheaval’, 90.
73.  This refers to network-enabled capabilities designed to perform a wide-range

of military tasks.

74. British Ministry of Defence, Delivering Security in a Changing World.
75. Latawski and Smith, The Kosovo Crisis and the Evolution of Post-Cold War

European Security, 130.

76. L. Freedman (2001) ‘Defence’, in A. Seldon (ed.) The Blair Effect: The Blair

Government 1997–2001, (London: Little, Brown and Company), 295.

77. See M. Takle (2002) ‘Towards a Normalisation of German Security

and Defence Policy: German Participation in International Military
Operations’, ARENA Working Paper, No. 10, http://www.arena.uio.no/
publication/wp02_10.htm.

78. S. Hürsoy (2002) The New Security Concept and the German-French

Approaches to the European ‘Pillar of Defence’, 1999–2000 (Marburg: Tectum
Verlag), 224.

79. Davis, ‘The Long-term Outlook for NATO and the ESDP’, 213.
80. Tackle, ‘Towards a Normalisation of German Security and Defence Policy’.
81. Hürsoy, The New Security Concept, 260–1.
82. Ibid., 273–5.
83. Forster, A. and W. Wallace (2000) ‘Common Foreign and Security Policy:

From Shadow to Substance’, in H. Wallace and W. Wallace (eds) Policy-
making in the European Union, 4th edn (Oxford: Oxford University Press),
471.

84. B. Schmitt (2000) ‘From Cooperation to Integration: Defence and

Aerospace Industries in Europe. Institute for Security Studies of the WEU’,
Chaillot Paper 40, 10, 16–17; In aerospace, there are now two major firms:
EADS and BAe Systems (the former BAe) – the former being horizontally
integrated with strong points in the civilian aerospace and the later being
vertically integrated and highly specialized in the area of defence, where
it has a wide range of activities. EADS (European Aeronautic, Defence
and Space Company) is a Franco-German entity, which originates from

178 Securing Europe

the merger of the German champion, Dasa, and its French counterpart,
Aerospatiale-Matra, which took place in 1999, and the Spanish, for-
merly state-owned CASA’s integration into it. BAe Systems is the result
of the British firm, BAe’s, acquisition of Marconi, the British group has
gone from being a military aerospace platform builder to a real systems
manufacturer that has important capabilities in defence electronics. At
the same time, the integration of Marconi North America has made BAe
Systems a major actor in the American market. Indeed, BAe Systems
North America is one of the Pentagon’s main suppliers and the group’s
turnover in the US is higher than that in Britain. Moreover, it has further
strengthened its presence in the US by purchasing Lockheed Martin’s
control systems business. The Pentagon also claims to treat BAe Systems
North America like an American firm, which is a clear advantage when
tendering for contracts, due to the ‘Buy American’ Act, ibid., 23–4, 32.

85. D. Keohane 2003, interview, 17 December.
86. Brussels diplomat 2003, interview, 24 October.
87. J. Medcalf (2003) ‘Cooperation between the EU and NATO’, in ed.

J. Krause, A. Wenger and L. Watanabe (eds) Unraveling the European Security
and Defence Policy Conundrum, 104, 109.

88. Ibid., 105.
89. Hürsoy, The New Security Concept, 397.
90. ‘US Dismay over Blair’s Stance on EU Defence’, Financial Times, 16 October

2003, A1.

91. ‘US to Confront Brussels over Defence Policy’, Financial Times, 17 October

2003, A1.

92. ‘NATO Divided over Separate EU Military Planning Unit’, Financial Times,

1 December 2003, A2.

93.  Brussels diplomat 2003, interview, 24 October.
94.  D. Keohane 2003, interview, 17 December.
95.  Brussels diplomat 2003, interview, 24 October.

4 Justice and Home Affairs Post-September 11

1. J. Lodge (1991) ‘Frontier Problems and the Single Market’, in R. Clutterbuck,

A. Jamieson and A. Lodge, Counter-Terrorism in Europe: Implications of 1992
(London: Research Institute for the Study of Conflict and Terrorism), 52.

2. The belief that police action against terrorism required exceptional meas-

ures led to a bout of legislation in several European countries, which
effectively enlarged police powers in the sphere of pro-active criminal
investigation. In Germany, police were empowered to search all apart-
ments in a block if they suspected that terrorists and hostages were hid-
ing out there, to set up roadblocks, and to establish the identity of people
passing through neighbourhoods in the vicinity of terrorist incidents.
The Bundeskriminalamt, the Federal Investigative Office (BKA), was also
given a mandate to establish computerized files and search concepts. In

Notes 179

Britain, the 1974 Prevention of Terrorism Act permitted police to demand
evidence of identity and to arrest people without warrant if they were sus-
pected of any offences covered by the Act. Police had the right to detain
such persons without charge for 48 hours; this could be extended in any
particular case by the Secretary of State by a further 5 days. Moreover,
when the Act was reviewed in 1989, police were given extended access
to bank accounts and business records anywhere in Britain: police were
empowered to share information with each other and with the social
security authorities, and the onus was placed on suspected racketeers ‘to
prove that there was a legitimate source of their funds’. In France, police
powers were increased in 1989 to permit police officers to prevent people
leaving the scene of the crime if they required information.

  See D. Bigo (1994) ‘The European Internal Security Field: Stakes
and Rivalries in a Newly Developing Area of Police Intervention’, in
M. Anderson and M. den Boer (eds) Policing Across National Boundaries
(London and New York: Pinter Publishers), 166; M. Anderson (2000)
‘Counterterrorism as an Objective of European Police Cooperation’, in
F.  Reinares (ed.) European Democracies against Terrorism: Governmental
Policies and Intergovernmental Cooperation (Aldershot: Ashgate Dartmouth),
236; D. T. Schiller (1987) ‘The Police Response to Terrorism: A Critical
Overview’, in P. Wilkinson and A. M. Stewart in association with
G. D. Smith, A. YaDeau and T. Schiller (eds) Contemporary Research on
Terrorism  (Aberdeen: Aberdeen University Press), 546; R. Clutterbuck
(1990)  Terrorism, Drugs and Crime in Europe after 1992  (London and
New York: Routledge), 93.

3. J. Benyon (1996) ‘Building Police Co-operation: The European Construction

Site Around the Third Pillar’, in I. Hampsher-Monk and J. Stanyer (eds)
Contemporary Political Studies 1996, Vol. 2 (Belfast: PSA), 1058.

4. Schiller, ‘The Police Response to Terrorism’, 546. This is demonstrated by

a few high profile cases in which informal and intimate relations played a
crucial role in the respective outcomes. In 1977, for example, the German
GSG9 assisted their Dutch counterparts in the rescue of passengers from a
hijacked train near Gilmmen, The Netherlands. In the same year, coopera-
tion between the British SAS and the German GSG9 took place during the
final stages of shadowing a hijacked Lufthansa airplane through Dubai
and Aden to Mogadishu Airport. Similar informal relations were also estab-
lished between domestic intelligence agencies involved in anti-terrorist
work. The officers of the British SO13 – Scotland Yard’s Anti-Terror Squad –
and Secret Service (MI5) (that took over the anti-terrorist work of SO13 in
1992), the German Bundesamt für Verfassungsschutz, or the Federal Office
for the Protection of the Constitution, (BfV) and BKA, the French Direction
de la Surveillance du Territoire (DST) and the Direction de Documentation
Extérieure et de Contre-Espionnage (SDECE), for example, have strong
links as a result of their informal bilateral relations. Such contacts between
the French DST and its German counterpart(s) were decisive in the
DST’s destruction of the French group Action Directe (AD) – a left-wing,

180 Securing Europe

pro-Palestinian group. Similar cooperation also exists between officers
of British Special Branch and the BKA, and MI5 and the German BfV.
See Clutterbuck, Terrorism, Drugs and Crime in Europe after 1992, 122;
P. Chalk (1996) West European Terrorism and Counter-Terrorism: The
Evolving Dynamic (Basingstoke and London: Macmillan Ltd.; St. Martin’s
Press, Inc.), 107.

5. Anderson, ‘Counterterrorism as an Objective of European Police

Cooperation’, 229.

  6. Chalk, West European Terrorism and Counter-Terrorism, 122.
  7.  Chalk, ibid., 122; Benyon, ‘Building Police Co-operation’, 1050.
  8. Lodge, Counter-Terrorism in Europe: Implications of 1992, 53.
  9.  Benyon, ‘Building Police Co-operation’, 1055.
10. Chalk, West European Terrorism and Counter-Terrorism, 124.
11.  M. den Boer (2004) ‘Plural Governance and EU Internal Security: Chances

and Limitations of Enhanced Cooperation in the Area of Freedom,
Security and Justice’, ARENA Paper, 25 May, 2; A. Podolski (2004)
‘European Intelligence Co-operation – Failing Part of CFSP and ESDP?’,
Reports & Analyses 6/04/A. www.csm.org.pl.

12. Chalk, West European Terrorism and Counter-Terrorism, 118–19; Schiller,

D. (1988) ‘From a National to an International Response’, in H. H. Tucker
(ed.) Combating the Terrorists: Democratic Responses to Political Violence
(New York and Oxford: Facts on File), 186, 190.

13. P. Chalk (2000) ‘The Third Pillar on Judicial and Home Affairs Cooperation,

Anti-Terrorist Collaboration and Liberal Democratic Acceptability’, in
F. Reinares (ed.) European Democracies Against Terrorism: Governmental
Policies and Intergovernmental Cooperation (Ashgate: Aldershot Darmouth),
185.

14. Bigo, ‘The European Internal Security Field’, 166.
15. TREVI initially brought together professionals from member states in

two operational working groups: one concerned with terrorism and the
exchange of information/mutual assistance on terrorist activities, and the
other with training and the exchange of scientific/technical information
to facilitate the fight against terrorism and mass disturbances of public
order.

16. Chalk, West European Terrorism and Counter-Terrorism, 122–3.
17. Benyon, ‘Building Police Co-operation’, 1050–1.
18. Ibid., 163–4; Anderson, ‘Counterterrorism as an Objective of European

Police Cooperation’, 228.

19. Bigo, ‘The European Internal Security Field’, 164.
20. Council of the European Union (2005), ‘Living in an Area of Freedom,

Security and Justice’, General Secretariat DG F – Communications,
Brussels: Council of the European Union, 1 January, 7.

21. Benyon, Building Police Co-operation’, 1048.
22. I. Loader (2005) ‘Policing, Securitization and Democratization in Europe’,

18 April, http://www.libertysecurity.org/article209.html, 7.

23. Ibid., 1.

Notes 181

24. Bigo, ‘The European Internal Security Field’, 163–5.
25. M. Anderson and J. Apap (2002) ‘Changing Conceptions of Security and

Their Implications for EU Justice and Home Affairs Cooperation’, CEPS
Policy Brief, No. 26, 3–4.

26. Bigo, ‘The European Internal Security Field’, 165; Benyon, ‘Building

Police Co-operation’, 1044.

27. Anderson, ‘Counterterrorism as an Objective of European Police

Cooperation’, 235.

28. Ibid., 230.
29. M. den Boer (2003) ‘9/11 and the Europeanisation of Anti-terrorist Policy:

A Critical Assessment’, Notre Europe Policy Paper, No. 6, 1.

30. Swiss Federal Integration Office DFA/DEA (2005), ‘The EU Extension

and the Extension of the Agreement on the Free movement of Persons’,
http://www. europa.admin.ch, 15.

31. Chalk, West European Terrorism and Counter-Terrorism, 125–7.
32. Benyon, ‘Building Police Co-operation’, 1049.
33. Scottish Parliament. The Information Centre (2002) EU Justice and Home

Affairs Policy. SPICe Briefing, 13 March, www.scottish.parliament.uk/
business/research/subject/criminal.htm, 3.

34. Benyon, ‘Building Police Co-operation’, 1052.
35. The TEU was able to do this because the third pillar did not start out from

the premise that all internal borders should be abolished, as Schengen
had, but instead reaffirmed the aim of facilitating the free movement of
people. This was a key factor facilitating Britain’s further involvement
in ‘internal’ security cooperation: Britain, along with Ireland, has been
given a special dispensation that allows it to treat its ports and airports as
external frontiers with respect to third country nationals. See Chalk, ‘The
Third Pillar on Judicial and Home Affairs Cooperation’, 186.

36. Benyon, ‘Building Police Co-operation’, 1054–5; Elise, ‘Institutional

Building in the Area of Freedom, Security and Justice: Mapping Specialized
Committees and Agencies’, http://www.libertysecurity.org/elise/article149
.html, date accessed 22 March 2009, 6.

37. G. M. Segell (2004) ‘Intelligence Agency Relations between the European

Union and the US’, International Journal of Intelligence and CounterIntelligence,
Vol. 17, No. 1, 83; Lodge, Counter-Terrorism in Europe: Implications of
1992, 29.

38. M. Den Boer (2000) ‘The Fight against Terrorism in the Second and Third

Pillars of the Maastricht Treaty: Complement or Overlap?’, in F. Reinares
(ed.) European Democracies Against Terrorism: Governmental Policies and
Intergovernmental Cooperation (Ashgate: Aldershot Dartmouth), 214,
221; also see Annex 3 of the Presidency Conclusions of the Madrid
European Council, 15–16 December 1995, which contains the Gomera
Declaration.

39. Lodge, Counter-Terrorism in Europe: Implications of 1992, 49.
40. During the 1970s, the governments of EC states sought to remove the polit-

ical offence exception that was built into the 1976 European Convention

182 Securing Europe

on Extradition. A subsequent review of the Convention led to the draft-
ing of the 1977 Council of Europe Convention on the Suppression of
Terrorism (ECST), which entered into force in September 1978. In follow-
ing year, the EC opened up for signature the Dublin Agreement, which
ensured, without reservation or qualification, the application of the ECST
among its members. While the Agreement itself failed to receive sufficient
ratifications to allow it to enter into force, all of the then 12 members of
the EU, as well as the four new members, Austria, Finland, Sweden, and
Norway, have ratified the ECST. It essentially lowered the threshold for
extraditable offences, though did not remove the political offence excep-
tion. See Chalk, West European Terrorism and Counter-Terrorism, 123.

41. Ibid., 129–30; Chalk, ‘The Third Pillar on Judicial and Home Affairs

Cooperation’, 182.

42. Elise, ‘Institutional Building in the Area of Freedom, Security, Justice’, 1.
43. Memorandum by Statewatch to sub-committee ‘E’ of the House of Lords

Select Committee on the European Communitie’s Inquiry into ‘Mutual
Assistance in Criminal Matters’ (consideration of the draft Convention
on Mutual Assistance in Criminal Matters), Statewatch, http://www
.statewatch.org.

44. Council of the European Union (2005), ‘Living in an Area of Freedom,

Security and Justice’, General Secretariat DG F – Communications,
Brussels: Council of the European Union, 1 January.

45. B. Hall and A. Bhatt (1999) Policing Europe: EU Justice and Home Affairs

Co-operation, CER Pamphlet, 9–10; Scottish Parliament, The Information
Centre, EU Justice and Home Affairs Policy, 6.

46.  Loader, ‘Policing, Securitization and the Democratization in Europe’, 6.
47.  Quoted in ibid., 31–2.
48.  Segell, ‘Intelligence Agency Relations between the European Union and

the US’, 83.

49. Ibid., 86.
50. Hall and Bhatt, ‘Policing Europe: EU Justice and Home Affairs Co-opera-

tion’, 34.

51. Loader, ‘Policing, Securitization and Democratization in Europe’, 8.
52. Scottish Parliament, The Information Centre, EU Justice and Home Affairs

Policy, 8; European Council, ‘Living in an Area of Freedom, Security and
Justice’, 10–11; Hall and Bhatt, ‘Policing Europe: EU Justice and Home
Affairs Co-operation’, 33.

53. See the Council Framework Decision 2002/475/JHA of 13 June 2002 on

Combating Terrorism.

54. Elise, ‘Institutional Building in the Area of Freedom, Security and

Justice’, 2.

55. EU Institutions Press Release, ‘EU Counter Terrorism Efforts in the JHA

Field’, 12 March 2004, 3; den Boer, ‘9/11 and the Europeanisation of Anti-
terrorism Policy: A Critical Assessment’, 12.

56. Elise, ‘Institutional Building in the Area of Freedom, Security and

Justice’, 5.

Notes 183

57. Council of the European Union, Presidency Conclusions, Brussels European

Council, 21/22 June 2007, 7.

58. Segell, ‘Intelligence Agency Relations between the European Union and

the US’, 87–8; EU Institutions Press Release, ‘EU Counter Terrorism Efforts
in the JHA Field’, 3.

59. Den Boer, ‘9/11 and the Europeanisation of Anti-terrorism Policy’, 13.
60. Segell, ‘Intelligence Agency Relations between the European Union and

the US’, 82; EU Institutions Press Release, ‘EU Counter Terrorism Efforts
in the JHA Field’, 3.

61. Den Boer, ‘9/11 and the Europeanisation of Anti-terrorism Policy’, 14.
62. W. Rees (2003) ‘Transatlantic Relations and the “War on Terror”’, Journal

of Transatlantic Studies, Vol., No. 1, 88, H. Grabbe (2001) ‘Breaking
New Ground in Internal Security?’ in Europe after September 11th, CER
Pamphlet, 65; EU Institutions Press Release, ‘EU Counter Terrorism
Efforts in the JHA Field’, 3.

63. European Commission (2005) Proposal for a Framework Decision

on Exchange of Information under the Principle of Availability,
MEMO/05/367, Brussels, 12 October.

64. Den Boer, ‘9/11 and the Europeanisation of Anti-terrorism Policy’, 6–7.
65. Presidency Conclusions, Brussels European Council, 16–17 December

2004.

66. Quoted in J. Apap and S. Carrera (2003) ‘Maintaining Security within

Borders: Towards a Permanent State of Emergency in the EU?’ CEPS Policy
Brief, No. 41, 9. VIS and SIS II refer to the Visa Information System and
the second generation Schengen Information System, respectively.

67. Ibid., 10.
68. EU Institutions Press Release, ‘EU Counter Terrorism Efforts in the JHA

Field’, 4.

69. Grabbe, ‘Breaking New Ground in Internal Security’, 71.
70. See Anderson, ‘Counterterrorism as an Objective of European Police

Cooperation’, 230; M. Candappa (2003) ‘Prevention and Fight Against
Trafficking: Institutional Developments in Europe’, UK Report for the
Centre for Research in Ethnic Relations, University of Warwick, 13–4.
See the UK Home Office website, http://www.homeoffice.gov.uk, date
accessed 29 March 2009.

71. For information on UK legislative changes, see Candappa, ibid. For fur-

ther information on the Franco-Spanish JIT, see StateWatch Bulletin (2004),
Vol. 14, No. 5, http://www.statewatch.org/ contents/swbul14n5.html.

72. Commission of the European Communities, Report from the Commission

on National Measures Taken to comply with the Council Framework
Decision of 13 June 2002 on Joint Investigation Teams, COM (2004) 858
final, Brussels, 7 January 2005.

73. Chalk, ‘West European Terrorism and Counter-Terrorism: The Evolving

Dynamic’, 138. In relation to centralizing tendencies in Britain, see also
the National Crime Squad’s website, www.nationalcrimesquad.police.uk,
date accessed 29 March 2009.

184 Securing Europe

74. Schiller, ‘From a National to an International Response’, 187.
75. The group had established contact with the PLO by buying handguns

from Fatah agents who were fundraising in Germany. In order to escape
capture after freeing Andreas Baader from prison in 1970 and to inter-
nationalize their struggle, key members of the group flew from Berlin to
Amman and hid in a PLO camp. Ibid., 197; Schiller, ‘The Police Response
to Terrorism’, 538–40.

76. See Interpol’s website, http://www.interpol.int, date accessed 29 March

2009.

77. A. Niemenkari (2002) ‘EU/Schengen Requirements for National Border

Security Systems’, DCAF Working Paper, Geneva, 5–7.

78. See French Ministry of the Interior’s website, http://www.interieur.gouv

.fr, date accessed 29 March 2009; the German Federal Foreign Ministry’s
‘Facts about Germany’ webpage, http://www.tatsachen-ueber-deutschland
.de, date accessed 29 March 2009.

79. A. Maguer, ‘Cross-border Police Cooperation – Practical Manners,

Institutions and Structures along the French-German Border’, Project
Description (doctoral thesis), Max Planck Institute for Foreign and
International Criminal Law, http://www.libertysecurity.org, date accessed
13 June 2003, 4.

80. D. Lutterbeck (2003) The Fortress Walls: Policing the EU’s External Borders,

1990–2001, PhD thesis, 12–13, 208–11.

81. Ibid., 208–15.
82. See the German Federal Foreign Office’s Facts about Germany webpage

http://www.tatsachen-ueber-deutschland.de.

83. C. van den Anker, ‘Trafficking in the UK – A Country Report for the

NEWR’, Workshop in Amsterdam, April 2003.

84. Candappa, ‘Prevention and Fight Against Trafficking’.
85. For information on France, see ILO (2005), ‘Forced Labour: Labour

Exploitation and Human Trafficking in Europe’, http://www.ilo.org/
global/About_the_ILO/Media_and_public_information/Feature_stories/
lang–en/WCMS_075554/index.htm, 12 May; for Germany, see US State
Department (2005) ‘Sex Tourism, Human Trafficking and Sexual Abuse
of Children in Germany’, Extract from the US State Department’s
2005 Trafficking in Persons Report, http://www.uni-kassel.de/fb5/frieden/
themen/Menschenrechte/mensschenhandel2005.html.

86. For information on provisions for the EAW in the UK, see R. Oulds, ‘The

Extradition Bill’, The Bruges Group, http://www.brugesgroup.com/news
.live?article

⫽153&keyword⫽10, date accessed 29 March 2009; see also

Office of the Coordinator for Counterterrorism, US State Department
(2004) ‘Patterns of Global Terrorism’, 29 April, http://www.state.gov/s/ct/
rls/pgtrpt/2003/31626.htm.

87. M. Leaf and W. van Ballegooij (2005) ‘Towards a European Area of Freedom,

Security and Justice?’ Challenge Europe Online Journal 14; C. Gay (2006) ‘The
European Arrest Warrant and Its Application by Member States’, European
Issues, Fondation Robert Schuman Policy Paper, No. 16, 23 January, 6.

Notes 185

88. Segell, ‘Intelligence Agency Relations between the European Union

and the US’, 81, 89–90; Rees, ‘Transatlantic Relations and the “War on
Terror”’, 86–8.

89. ‘Proposed Exchange of Personal Data between Europol and USA Evades

EU data Protection Rights and Protections’, Statewatch News Online,
5 December 2002, http://www.statewatch.org/news/2002/nov/12eurousa
.htm.

90. ‘Extradition and Mutual Legal Assistance’, European Union Fact

Sheet, http://useu.usmission.gov/Dossiers/Extradition/default.asp, date
accessed 21 March 2009.

91. Rees, ‘Transatlantic Relations and the “War on Terror”’, 88; Segell,

‘Intelligence Agency Relations between the European Union and the
US’, 89.

92. United States Mission to the European Union, (2003) ‘US, EU Sign Legal

Assistance, Extradition Treaties’, 25 June 2003, http://useu.usmission
.gov/Article.asp?ID

⫽4C685933-563D-4DAA-85A9-F1ECECE0EE87;

‘Extradition and Mutual Legal Assistance’; den Boer, ‘9/11 and the
Europeanisation of Anti-terrorism Policy’, 16.

93. Den Boer, ‘9/11 and the Europeanisation of Anti-terrorism Policy’, 13;

Rees, ‘Transatlantic Relations and the “War on Terror”’, 88.

94. ‘Biometrics – the EU Takes Another Step Down the Road to 1984’,

Statewatch News Online, 19 June 2003, http://www.statewatch.org/
news/2003/sep/19eubiometric.htm.

95. PNR is a generic term for files created by airlines for each journey a

passenger books. Files are stored on the airlines’ reservation and depar-
ture control databases. The US Aviation and Transport Security Act of
November 2001 requires that airlines operating flights to the US, pro-
vide the US Customs and Border Protection Bureau (CBP), on request,
with electronic access to their PNR data. For further information on PNR
and the controversy over its transfer from EU airlines to the US CBP, see
the EU’s website http://www.europa.eu.

96. The ‘US CBP has stated that no other foreign, federal, state or local

agency has direct access to PNR data through the CBP. However, under
US law, other enforcement authorities may specifically request PNR
information from the CBP, and the CBP, at its discretion, may provide
such information. The US CBP has undertaken, in exercise of this
discretion, to provide PNR data to other law enforcement authorities
only for the purposes of preventing and combating terrorism and other
serious criminal offences.’ See ibid.; Apap and Carrera, ‘Maintaining
Security within Borders: Towards a Permanent State of Emergency in
the EU?’ 11.

97. K. Archick, (2005) ‘US-EU Cooperation against Terrorism’, CRS Report for

Congress, Congressional Research Service, The Library of Congress, 4.

98. Ibid.
99. Den Boer, ‘9/11 and the Europeanisation of Anti-terrorist Policy’, 16.
100. Ibid.

186 Securing Europe

5 The Stability Pact for South Eastern Europe

1. R. Biermann (1999) ‘The Stability Pact for South Eastern Europe –

Potential, Problems and Perspectives’, Centre for European Integration
Studies, Rheinische Wilhelms-Universität, Bonn, Discussion Paper, 1;
United Nations Security Council Resolution 1244, 10 June 1999; Cologne
Document, Cologne, 10 June 1999.

2. German official 2006, interview, 19 October; German official 2006, cor-

respondance, 15 November.

3. V. Bilandzic (2002) ‘Regional Approach – An Obstacle or an Opportunity

for an Early Integration of the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia into the
European Structures’, in Š. Alomerovi ´c, V. Bilandzic, E. Busek, S. Ergen,
E. Hasani, U. Janz, M. Predrag Jurekovi ´c, S. Moser-Starrach, G. Murra,
P. Pantev, B. Papenkort, D. Pilsel, D. J. D. Sandole, M. Staniˇ

ci ´c, The

Stability Pact for South East Europe – Dawn of an Era of Regional Co-operation
(Wien: Osterreichs Bundesheer).

4. Prior to the creation of the Community Assistance for Reconstruction,

Development and Stabilization (CARDS) in November 2000, the EU’s
main channels of assistance to the Western Balkans and applicant
states in Central and Eastern Europe were the OBNOVA and PHARE
programmes, respectively. In 2001, the OBNOVA programme was inte-
grated into the CARDS, which constitutes the Stability Pact’s principal
aid instrument for institution-building, reconstruction, development and
economic reform, and regional cooperation. For further details, see The
German Federal Ministry of Foreign Affairs, ‘Helping Countries Prepare
for Accession’, Europe, Auswärtiges Amt, http://www.auswaertiges-amt
.de/diplo/en/Europa/Erweiterung/UnterstuetzungsProgramm e.html, date
accessed 21 March 2009.

5. Biermann, ‘The Stability Pact for South Eastern Europe’, 9; Bilandzic,

‘Regional Approach – An Obstacle or Opportunity’, 112; European
Commission (1999), ‘Building on the Model of European Integration’,
Europe for BiH, No. 8.

6. Bilandzic, ‘Regional Approach – An Obstacle or Opportunity’, 113; see

the SECI Center’s website, http://www.secicenter.org, date accessed
29 March 2009.

7. R. Biermann (1999) ‘The Stability Pact for South Eastern Europe –

Potential, Problems and Perspectives’, discussion paper, Centre for European
Integration Studies, Rheinische Friedrich Wilhelms-Universität, Bonn,
12–13; The Stability Pact for South Eastern Europe (2004) The Stability
Pact for South Eastern Europe, 1.

8. Presidency Conclusions, EU Council summit in Vienna, 11–12 December

1998.

9. French official 2007, interview, 20 March.
10. Former German official 2006, correspondence, 15 November; French

official 2007, interview, 20 March.

Notes 187

11. W. Brauner, ‘Evaluation of the German Presidency’, Deutsche-Aussenpolitik

.de., http://www.deutsche-aussenpolitik.de/index.php?/resources/dossiers/
eu_evaluation.php, date accessed 22 March 2009.

12. Communication Presse, Council, 8 April 1999.
13. Communication Presse, Council, 26 April 1999.
14. Former German official 2006, correspondence, 15 November; French

official 2007, interview, 20 March.

15. H-D. Jacobsen (2005) ‘Economic Security and the Stability Pact for South-

eastern Europe’, www.studienforum-berlin.de/Economic%20Security-
2005.pdf.

16. Biermann, The Stability Pact for South Eastern Europe, 16; ‘Balkan Nations

Could Join EU’, The Guardian, 9 April 1999.

17.  Biermann, ibid., 17.
18.  Former German official 2006, correspondence, 15 November.
19. Biermann, The Stability Pact for South Eastern Europe, 18.
20.  S. Ergen (2002) The Stability Pact for Southeastern Europe-Brussels, Geneva

Centre for the Democratic Reform of Armed Forces (DCAF), Working
Paper, No. 34, 2; Cologne Document, 3.

21. Cologne Document.
22. German official 2006, interview, 19 October.
23. Former German Official, correspondence 2006, 15 November.
24. A. Miskimmon, ‘Europeanisation and German Foreign and Security

Policy – The Case of Stability Pact for South-Eastern Europe’, pre-
sented at a Workshop on Europeanisation of National Foreign Policies,
European Foreign Policy Unit, London School of Economics, London,
5 June 2002, 2.

25. Former German official 2006, correspondence, 15 November.
26. Ibid.; French official 2007, interview, 20 March.
27. M-J. Calic (2003) ‘Germany’s Role in Conflict Prevention and Post-

Conflict Reconstruction in South Eastern Europe’, German Foreign Policy in
Dialogue: A Quarterly E-Newsletter on German Foreign Policy 4, No. 10, 21.

28. Former German official 2006, correspondence, 15 November; French

official 2007, interview, March 20.

29. P. Buras and K. Longhurst (2005) ‘The Berlin Republic, Iraq and the Use

of Force’, in K. Longhurst and M. Zaboroski (eds) Old Europe, New Europe
and the Transatlantic Security Agenda (London and New York: Routledge),
30; French official 2007, interview, March 20.

30. Calic, ‘Germany’s Role in Conflict Prevention’, 21.
31. German official 2006, interview, 19 October; Former German official

2006, correspondence, 15 November.

32. Amb. Dr. M. Schaefer (2000) ‘Regional Cooperation as the Road to

the European Union. The Future of the Stability Pact’, Südosteuropa
Mittelungen, 04/2000, Special Issue, 25.

33. The Guardian, ‘Balkan Nations Could Join EU’; Biermann, The Stability

Pact for South Eastern Europe, 12–4; The Stability Pact for South Eastern

188 Securing Europe

Europe, The Stability Pact for South Eastern Europe, 1; Former German offi-
cial, correspondence 2006, 15 November.

34. German official 2006, interview, 19 October; Former German official, cor-

respondence 2006, 15 November.

35. Ergen, The Stability Pact for Southeastern Europe-Brussels; E. Busek (2004),

Special Coordinator of the Stability Pact for South Eastern Europe, ‘Five
Years of Stability Pact for South Eastern Europe: Achievements and
Challenges Ahead’, Speech at the London School of Economics, London,
8 March, 3.

36. See Working Group on Trade Liberalisation and Facilitation, Stability Pact

for South Eastern Europe, Strategy and Action Plan 2004, October 2003.

37. The Stability Pact for South Eastern Europe, The Stability Pact for South

Eastern Europe, 6; Busek, ‘Five Years of the Stability Pact for South Eastern
Europe’, 4. In the energy sector, for example, the groundwork was laid in
Athens in November 2002 for the creation of a single electricity market
in SEE in accordance with EU standards by 2005. The so-called Athens
Memorandum of Understanding on the Regional Electricity Market in
South Eastern Europe and Integration into the European Union Internal
Electricity was put in place to pursue the reform process in a predictable
(i.e. legally binding) manner. The provisions contained in it, of course,
imply opening national markets, as well as establishing independent
electricity regulatory agencies and creating national transmission sys-
tems operators, for instance. The agreement has since been expanded to
gas, which is expected to be reformed in line with the EU legislation in
that sector. Once EU standards are met, signatories of the MoU relating
to energy will gain access to the EU’s internal energy market, regardless
of the status of their membership application. The EU aims to establish
a free-trade area with its partners. See ‘EU Begins Talks with Region
on Common SEE Energy Market’, Stability Pact Press Release, Brussels,
19 July 2004, http://www.stabilitypact.org; Stability Pact for South
Eastern Europe, Stability Pact for South Eastern Europe, 6: Stability Pact for
South Eastern Europe’s website www.stabilitypact.org.

38. Stability Pact for South Eastern Europe, Stability Pact for South Eastern

Europe, 5; Stability Pact for South Eastern Europe’s website, www.stabilit-
ypact.org, date accessed 29 March 2009.

39. ‘Defence Conversion’, Working Table III: Security Issues, Stability Pact for

South Eastern Europe, www.stabilitypact.org/def-econ/default.asp, date
accessed 29 March 2009.

40. ‘Small Arms and Light Weapons’, Working Table III: Security Issues,

Stability Pact for South Eastern Europe, www.stabilitypact.org/salw/
default.asp, date accessed 29 March 2009.

41. ‘Ohrid Process on Border Security and Management’, Working Table III:

Security Issues, www.stabilitypact.org/specials/030522-ohrid/index.asp.

42. ‘Disaster Preparedness and Prevention Initiative’, Working Table III:

Security Issues, www.stability pact.org/dppi/default.asp.

43. Busek, ‘Five Years of the Stability for South Eastern Europe’, 5.

Notes 189

44. Ergen, The Stability Pact for Southeastern Europe-Brussels, 6–7; ibid., 4–5.
45. See Stability Pact for South Eastern Europe (2003) Police Forum Initiative

Report, 4 December.

46. Ibid.; Brussels diplomat 2004, interview, March.
47. ‘Police Task Force’, Working Table III: Security Issues, www.stabilitypact

.org/police/default.asp.

48. The EU’s TACIS programme was launched in 1992. It is aimed at states

of the former Soviet Union (with the exception of the Baltic States,
which are covered by the PHARE programme), including Mongolia. It
provides assistance for projects aimed at improving environmental pro-
tection, restructuring of state-owned enterprises, private sector develop-
ment, energy, transport, telecommunications, institution-building and
cross-border and regional cooperation. See The German Federal Foreign
Ministry, ‘Helping Countries Prepare for Accession’.

49. Twinning was used as a tool for transferring administrative skills linked to

institution-building in the candidate countries of Bulgaria and Romania.
It involves seconding civil servants from EU member states to work as
advisors in the SEE states. It has been available to the SAP countries since
October 2002. To-date, twinning projects have been launched in Albania
and Croatia and are currently being prepared for the rest of the region.
See Commission of the European Communities (2003) The Western
Balkans and European Integration, Communication from the Commission
to the Council and the European Parliament, Brussels, 21 May.

50. Stability Pact for South Eastern Europe (2003) Way Forward Document,

22/23 May, 15; Common Platform of the Ohrid Regional Conference on
Border Security and Management, 22/23 May 2003, 1–4; York University
Centre for International and Security Studies, Preliminary Gaps Analysis,
2003, 4.

51. ‘Mine Action’, Working Table III: Security Issues, www.stabilitypact.org/

wt3/mineaction.asp.

52. Busek, ‘Five Years of the Stability Pact for South Eastern Europe’, 8.
53. See the Stability Pact for South Eastern Europe’s website (www.stability

pact.org).

54. Former German official, correspondence 2006, 15 November.
55. Ergen, The Stability Pact for Southeastern Europe-Brussels, 1; York University’s

Centre for International and Security Studies. Preliminary Gaps Analysis,
2003, http://ssr.yciss.yorku.ca, 1. Busek, ‘Five Years of Stability Pact for
South Eastern Europe’, 1, 3.

56. Buras and Longhurst, ‘The Berlin Republic’, 30.
57. Miskimmon, ‘Europeanisation and German Foreign and Security Policy’,

5; Jacobsen, ‘Economic Security and the Stability Pact for South-
eastern Europe’, 5; Brauner, ‘Evaluation of the German EU-Presidency’, 3;
W. Brauner, ‘Evaluation of Germany’s Role in the Resolution of the
Kosovo Conflict’, Deutsche-Aussenpolitik.de, date accessed 29 March 2009,
3; German official 2006, interview, 19 October.

58. German official 2006, interview, 19 October.

190 Securing Europe

59. Brauner, ‘Evaluation of the German EU-Presidency’, 3.
60. A. Bendiek (2004) ‘Europe’s Conflict Resolution: The Stability Pact

in South Eastern Europe’, paper presented at the ECPR Joint Session
Workshop, Uppsala, 13–18 April, 19.

61. Ibid., 18.
62. Cologne Document.
63. ‘South East Europe Initiative’, and ‘Partnership for Peace’, NATO

Factsheets, http:www.nato.int/docu/facts.htm; Biermann, The Stability
Pact for South Eastern Europe, 24–5.

64. M. Brzoska (2003) Development Donors and the Concept of Security Sector

Reform, Geneva Centre for the Democratic Control of Armed Forces
(DCAF), Occasional Paper, No. 4, 5.

65. Ibid., 10–13.
66. The World Bank (2000) Annual Report 2000, http://www.worldbank.org/

html/extpb/annrep2000/content.htm.

67. S. Gill (1998) ‘New Constitutionalism, Democratisation and Global

Political Economy’, Pacifica Review, Vol. 10, No. 1, 32–3.

68. Brzoska, Development Donors and the Concept of Security Sector Reform, 19.
69. Ibid., 3–4.

6 Conclusion: Socio-Functional Europeanization

1. M. den Boer (2003) ‘9/11 and the Europeanisation of Anti-terrorist Policy:

A Critical Assessment’, Notre Europe Policy Paper, No. 6, 16.

191

Index

Albania 58, 127, 130–1, 134–5,

141, 144

Amsterdam Treaty (1997) 5, 57, 59,

82, 132, 134–5, 161

atlanticism 27–8

Belgium 56,

86–7

bipolarity 16
border management 6, 13, 113,

115–16, 119, 125, 140, 142

Bosnia-Herzegovina 127,

131,

141–4

Britain 44, 70, 79–81, 84–7,

130, 134

see also under United Kingdom

Bulgaria 127, 130–1, 141, 144

I capabilities 55–6, 62

Central and Eastern Europe 27, 82
Combined Joint Task Forces

(CJTF) 56

Commission, The 20, 60, 65–6,

74, 76, 88, 131, 134, 153,
156, 165

Common Foreign and Security

Policy (CFSP) 4, 8–9, 41,
53, 57, 59, 74, 82, 132, 137,
152, 159

Communism 25,

157

conflict prevention  4–5, 13, 17
Copenhagen criteria  134–5
Council Secretariat  60
criminal justice  5–6, 8, 100, 111,

119, 123, 125–6, 154, 162, 164

criminal law 107, 111, 113,

117–19, 125, 162

crisis management 4–5, 13, 18, 26,

56–9, 62, 65, 69, 77–8, 80,
82–3, 87, 89, 129, 146, 152,
154, 161, 165

Croatia 127, 130–1, 141, 143–4

Dayton Peace Agreement

1995 130–1

Democratization 59,

65,

139

Denmark 59,

EU Charter of Rights 121
EU Convention on Mutual Legal

Assistance (2000) 110

European Defence Community

(EDC) Treaty (1952) 7, 55

EU Military Committee

(EUMC) 59, 62–3, 65

EU-NATO relations 55

Berlin-plus arrangement 83–5

Eurocorps 57
European Arrest Warrant (EAW) 6,

118, 125

European Council 7
European Court of Justice

(ECJ) 38–9

European Defence Agency (EDA)

65–6, 68, 73, 75, 87–8, 160

European Defence Community

(EDC) 7,

European independent legal body

(EUROJUST) 9, 11, 105, 107,
109, 122, 126

European Parliament 60, 122, 165
European Police Office (EUROPOL)

6, 9, 92, 96, 102–3, 105–6,
109–10, 112, 120–2, 124,
142

European Security and Defense

Identity (ESDI) 56, 79, 82, 85

European Security and Defence

Policy (ESDP)

European Union Military Staff

(EUMS) 59, 62, 64, 68, 86

Petersberg tasks 58, 60–1, 83,

88, 160

192 Index

European Security and Defence

Policy (ESDP) (continued)

Policy Planning and Early

Warning Unit (PPEWU) 59

Political Security Committee

(PSC) 59,

St Malo Declaration 57–8, 79, 85

European Security Strategy (ESS) 5,

60–1, 68–70, 88–9

europeanization

horizontal europeanization 44–5,

48, 50, 106–7

vertical europeanization 46, 48,

50, 159

extradition 97, 100, 102, 104, 109,

111, 118, 121–2, 125

EU Extradition Convention

(1996) 104

European Convention on

Extradition (1957) 104

European Convention on the

Suppression of Terrorism
(ECST) (1977) 104

Former Yugoslav Republic (FYR) 132

see also under Serbia

Former Yugoslav Republic of

Macedonia (FYROM) 127,
131, 134, 141, 144

see also under Macedonia

France 3, 7, 95, 98, 113–15, 117–18,

130, 134, 146

General Affairs and External Relations

Council (GAERC) 60, 65

Germany 3, 16–7, 53, 55–6, 70–1,

78, 81–7, 95, 98, 113–16,
127–8, 130, 133, 135, 137–8,
143, 145, 147, 149–52

Gulf War (1991) 55, 78, 81

hegemony 15, 27, 136, 150
Holland 56
human rights 104, 122, 131,

137, 139

Hungary 127

identities

national identities 17, 153
social identities 11, 36–7, 44

intelligence 5–9, 14, 16, 27, 55–6,

72, 85, 95–7, 103, 108–10,
112–13, 115, 120–1, 125–6,
154–5, 162, 164, 166

intergovernmentalism 21
International monetary Fund

(IMF) 144,

147–8

Interpol 120,

142

Iraq 27, 67, 86–7
Italy 56

Kosovo 4, 55, 57, 127, 130, 133,

138–9, 141, 144–5

law enforcement 6, 8, 24, 75,

92, 96, 98–100, 105–7, 110,
114, 120–2, 124–6, 132, 156,
162, 164

Maastricht Treaty (1992) 101

see also under Treaty of the European

Union

Macedonia 127

see also under Former Yugoslav

Republic of Macedonia

Moldova 141–2,

144

Multilateralism 17, 150, 152, 163
multi-level governance 20
multipolar 15
Mutual Legal Assistance Treaty

(2003) 122

neo-functionalism 19–20,

28,

76, 88–9, 92–3, 102, 125,
156, 162

neo-Marxism 23, 29, 49, 77, 90,

119, 126, 151

new institutionalism 29–30,

32, 50

historical institutionalism 30–1,

43, 50

rational choice institutionalism

30, 38, 50

Index 193

sociological institutionalism 32,

37, 46–7, 50, 157;
structuration theory 34, 36,
39, 157

Nice Treaty (2000) 59, 109
North Atlantic Treaty Organization

(NATO) 4–7, 14, 18, 25,
28, 53, 55–7, 64, 77–86, 130,
132–3, 137–8, 141–2, 144,
146, 150, 164–5

North Atlantic Cooperation

Council (NACC) 82

North Atlantic Council (NAC) 59
Partnership for Peace (PfP) 146

Open Method of Coordination

(OMC) 41,

Organisation for Economic Co-

operation and Development
(OECD) 140

Organisation for Security and

Cooperation in Europe
(OSCE) 138, 141, 143–4, 149

Ottawa process 141

Passenger Name Record (PNR)

data 122–3

Pleven Plan 7, 55
policing 5, 8, 24, 94, 100, 102,

104, 113–15, 119, 125, 130,
142, 162

Group Police Working Group on

Terrorism (PWGOT) 95

realism 49, 74, 151

neo-realism 15, 28, 49

regime theory 18–9, 25, 28, 30, 49,

92, 136, 145, 150

regionalization 20
Revolution in Military Affairs

(RMA) 70

Romania 127, 130–2, 141–2, 144
Russian Federation 15, 127, 146

Schengen acquis 112
Schengen Agreement 45, 100

Schengen Convention (1990)  98
security governance approach  22
security sector reform (SSR)  149
Serbia 137

see also under Former Yugoslav

Republic

Serbia-Montenegro 141,

143–4

Single European Act (SEA) (1986)

96, 99

Single Market 24, 101
Slovenia 127
small arms and light weapons

(SALW) 141

socialization 22–3,

29,

South Eastern Europe Initiative

(SEEI) 146

South-East European Co-operative

Initiative (SECI) 131.2, 142

sovereignty 8–9, 11, 13–4, 16–7,

26, 40, 44, 55, 70, 76, 81, 88,
91, 111–12, 119, 123, 139,
147, 153–4, 162

Soviet Union  6, 15, 25, 99
Spain  56, 59, 113–14
strategic culture  17, 26–7, 48,

79, 128–9, 136, 139, 144,
149, 163

supranationalism 20–1, 49, 76,

88–9, 156

terrorism

anti-terrorism 6,

95–6,

106,

110–11, 120, 123

counter-terrorism 104,

109,

120, 125

Euro-terrorism 94,

107

September 11, 2001 5, 13, 93,

112, 119–20, 122–3, 161–2

War on Terror 91, 93

The Alliance 4, 7, 16–7, 25–7, 55,

57, 79–81, 85, 154–5

see also North Atlantic Treaty

Organization

The Federal Republic of Germany

(FRG) 44

The Netherlands 3, 95, 144

194 Index

transatlantic security relations

11–2, 23, 54–5, 77, 90, 93,
119, 127, 150–1, 153, 164

transnational networks 9–10
Treaty of the European Union (TEU)

(1992) 4–5, 53, 58, 82–3,
101, 121, 124, 161

see also under Maastricht Treaty

TREVI (Terrorism, Radicalism,

Extremism, and International
Violence) 94–8,

100–1,

103, 125

United Kingdom (UK) 56, 79–80,

87, 117, 133

see also under Britain

unipolar 15
United Nations (UN) 68–9, 71,

117, 120, 130, 144

Charter of the United Nations 71
UN Security Council 71

United States (US) 5–7, 12–8, 24–9,

94, 119–23, 126–7, 129–31,
146, 150–2, 154–5, 164–6

Western Balkans 127, 129, 132,

134, 138, 141–2, 146, 150,
152–3

Western European Union (WEU)

4–5, 53, 56–9, 79, 82–3, 130,
154, 165

World Bank 144, 147–8

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