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This book examines the underlying foundations on which the European Union's counter-terrorism and police co-operation policies have been built since the inception of the Treaty on European Union, questioning both the effectiveness and legitimacy of the EU's efforts in these two security areas. Given the importance of such developments to the wider credibility of the EU as a security actor, it adopts a more structured analysis of key stages of the implementation process. These include the establishment of objectives, both at the wider level of internal security co-operation and in terms of both counter-terrorism and policing, particularly in relation to the European Police Office, the nature of information exchange and the ‘value added’ by legislative and operational developments at the European level. The book also offers a more accurate appraisal of the official characterisation of the terrorist threat within the EU as a ‘matter of common concern’. In doing so, not only does it raise important questions about the utility of the European level for organising internal security co-operation, but it also provides a more comprehensive assessment of the EU's activities throughout the lifetime of the Third Pillar, placing in a wide and realistic context the EU's reaction to the events of 11 September 2001 and the greater prominence of Islamist terrorism.
also makes information exchange on the ground much faster and transparent ( Dijkzeul and Sandvik, 2019 ). Despite these technological advances, quantitative practices during emergencies – such as counting populations – remains a non-exact science. As Read et al. (2016 : 1326) argue, the ‘ideal of giving a full and accurate picture’ of a particular humanitarian setting offers the illusion of total depiction rather than a project that can be fully
6 A question of credibility: information exchange Complementing the previous chapter, which looked in specific detail at aspects of the EU’s legislative and operational agency activity, this chapter will consider the area of information exchange, assessing the EU’s attempts to ‘add value’ to preexisting bilateral and multilateral exchanges between member states. Maintaining a comprehensive approach, the chapter will address both the pre- and post-11 September eras, with a particular focus on Europol. Europol is only part of the overarching web of nodes, networks
-ordination and information exchange At their most basic, and reflecting their essential ‘party-network’ role, TNPs have acted as a ‘co-ordinating nexus’ for parties in the European Union (Lightfoot, 2005 : 47). They act as a meeting forum and information exchange for disparate national parties. They are in addition conduits for information between national parties and EU-level party elites, particularly if they aim to effect co-ordination between party actors in different EU institutions. Indeed, increasing EU integration has necessitated far
1980s post-GLF organisations took on the self-conscious role of discerning ‘what went wrong?’ in the liberation years and what opportunities there were now for gay left politics. Groups like the Gay Activist Alliance (GAA) and the Gay Workers Movement (GWM) continued to work to unite gay activism with the Left, alongside the Gay Left Collective’s more theoretical stance. The Paedophile Information Exchange (PIE) explored the lessons learnt from lesbian and gay politics and tried to relate them to a different, more challenging, sexual identity. PIE exposed the
Since their introduction in the mid-sixteenth century, coffeehouses have arguably been the most important sites of adult-male sociability in Istanbul, the capital city of the Ottoman Empire. This chapter analyses their long term history in a comparative and transnational perspective. Throughout their long existence, Ottoman and Europeans coffeehouses fulfilled many similar functions. They were places of leisure and information exchange where men met, passed on news, played games, told stories to each other and conversed in the semi-private spirit of a public setting. They also served as places of commercial activity, where deals could be arranged; of occupational activity, where labour could be hired and practitioners of different professions and trade sell their services; and nodal points of migration networks where new immigrants found temporary and even sometimes permanent shelter, and established contacts in setting up a new life in urban centres. Coffeehouses, however, also served as spheres of political opinion making and resistance – both in highly visible and more subtle ways. In what ways did Ottoman coffeehouses differ from European coffeehouses, and what transnational flows of influence can be detected here?
Explaining how leprosy was considered in various historical settings by referring to categories of uncleanliness in antiquity, is problematic. The book historicizes how leprosy has been framed and addressed. It investigates the history of leprosy in Suriname, a plantation society where the vast majority of the population consisted of imported slaves from Africa. The relationship between the modern stigmatization and exclusion of people affected with leprosy, and the political tensions and racial fears originating in colonial slave society, exerting their influence until after the decolonization up to the present day. The book explores leprosy management on the black side of the medical market in the age of slavery as contrasted with the white side. The difference in perspectives on leprosy between African slaves and European masters contributed to the development of the 'Great Confinement' policies, and leprosy sufferers were sent to the Batavia leprosy asylum. Dutch debates about leprosy took place when the threat of a 'return' of leprosy to the Netherlands appeared to materialise. A symbiotic alliance for leprosy care that had formed between the colonial state and the Catholics earlier in the nineteenth century was renegotiated within the transforming landscape of Surinamese society to incorporate Protestants as well. By 1935, Dutch colonial medicine had dammed the growing danger of leprosy by using the modern policies of detection and treatment. Dutch doctors and public health officials tried to come to grips with the Afro-Surinamese belief in treef and its influence on the execution of public health policies.
conclude that the EU has been building thus far on entirely secure foundations. While the overall picture is mixed, at best, with the most positive record found in terms of Europol’s development from a relatively shaky start to establish itself more fully in the field of information exchange particularly, the EU’s wider record of converting its occasionally inflated rhetoric into practical reality is sadly insubstantial. It is worth outlining the central conclusions of this assessment. Missing the big picture One of the main issues – explained in more depth in Chapter 2
2010 ; De Vries 2010 ; Amoore 2011 ; Rouvroy 2013 ; Leese 2014 ); or the modes of cooperation and information exchange between security agencies and security professionals (e.g., Bigo et al. 2007 ; Balzacq 2008 ; Geyer 2008 ; De Hert and Bellanova 2011 ). This is another list that could be continued, but it suffices to illustrate the wide array of inquiries into mobility against the backdrop of
exchange of views . . . than would be possible at formal EU meetings involving all twenty-five member states’. 40 As such, it is difficult to view it as anything other than a response to enlargement. The issue of building and ensuring trust, essential for ensuring information exchange within the EU, has still to be reconciled within an enlarged EU. It was a problem faced by Interpol in the past, with one