Europol and the Policing of International Terrorism: Counter‐Terrorism in a Global Perspective

Abstract

The European Police Office (Europol) is an international police organization that was formed to promote cooperation among law enforcement agencies in the European Union. Framed within the context of the Treaty of the European Union, Europol’s mandate includes all serious forms of international crime, including international terrorism. This paper offers an analysis of the organization of Europol’s counter‐terrorism operations in the context of the history and dynamics of international police cooperation. More specifically, on the basis of the bureaucratization theory of policing, Europol is reviewed to exemplify the dual forces of political control over the organization via the regulative bodies of the European Union, on the one hand, and the institutional autonomy and professional expertise of participating police agencies, on the other. The outcome of these dual forces can be expected to determine the course and outcome of counter‐terrorist policing in the European Union in years to come.

Keywords:

• counter‐terrorism
• Europol
• globalization
• international terrorism
• policing

Acknowledgments

A previous version of this paper was presented at the annual meeting of the American Society of Criminology, Denver, November 2003. The Richard L. Walker Institute of International and Area Studies provided funding for this project. I thank the Editor, Chester Britt, and the anonymous reviewers at Justice Quarterly, for their help in finalizing this paper. I am grateful to Brian Hudak, for his valuable research assistance.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Mathieu Deflem

Mathieu Deflem is Associate Professor in the Sociology Department at the University of South Carolina. His current research interests include the policing of terrorism, international police cooperation, abortion policy, and sociological theories of law. Deflem is author of Policing World Society: Historical Foundations of International Police Cooperation (Oxford University Press, 2002), and editor of Terrorism and Counter‐Terrorism: Criminological Perspectives (Elsevier, 2004), and Habermas, Modernity and Law (Sage, 1996).