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Abstract
The European Union counter-terrorist financing (EU-CTF) regime has experienced significant developments since 2001. This article builds on the notion of supranational policy entrepreneurship (SPE) in order to investigate the post-9/11 development of EU-CTF regime. Admittedly, counter-terrorism is a policy area in which supranational institutions have rarely taken the lead, nor consistently been very active. However, the article suggests that, despite the centrality that member states maintain in the policy-making process, European institutions, notably the European Commission and the Council Secretariat, have been significant in EU-CTF cooperation. While the European Commission and the Council Secretariat both played the role of an SPE, the article outlines the different ways in which this occurred. Empirically, the article challenges an intergovernmentalist perspective by examining the implementation of United Nations Security Council resolutions and Financial Action Task Force recommendations on countering terrorist financing at the EU level.
Notes
1. The FATF is an intergovernmental body which operates in the context of the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) since its creation at the 1989 July Paris Summit Meeting of the seven major industrialised nations (G7). The FATF mandate is to design and promote policies at both the national and the international level in order to fight money laundering and, after 2001, also terrorist financing.
2. Actually, only UN resolutions are binding in international law, whereas FATF standards take the form of recommendations. Nonetheless, despite this non-binding character, FATF recommendations were seen as the appropriate course of action after 9/11.
3. The Council Secretariat is here assumed to be a supranational institutional actor following the conceptualisation by Christiansen (Citation2002, p. 35), who suggests that ‘in spite of the official nomenclature, the Council Secretariat is clearly an institution, possessing a formal structure with a set of internal rules and administrative practices which regulate the work of a body of permanent staff. As it is located at the European level, possessing a high degree of institutional autonomy, it is arguably supranational in nature.
4. It is also important to note the fact that events in Brussels did not happen in isolation, but were influenced by events in New York, Luxembourg, Stockholm and the other Member States’ capitals.
5. Interview, General Secretariat of the Council of the EU, Brussels, March 2009.
6. The other three priority areas include information sharing, mainstreaming counter-terrorism in the EU external relations, and improving civil protection and protection of critical infrastructures.
7. See doc. 7177/04.
8. In the field of countering terrorist financing the role of the CTC is to facilitate coordination between the EU and national CTF efforts, both internally and externally. The CTC also coordinates between and within EU institutions, specifically between the different relevant bodies in the Council (i.e. the COTER, the MDG-Multi-Disciplinary Group on Organised Crime, the TWG-Terrorism Working Group, the ‘clearing house’), and between the diverse Directorates General of the Commission which have CTF tasks (i.e. DG Justice, Liberty and Security, DG Internal Market and Services, DG External Relations).
9. The former CTC, Mr Gijs de Vries, was in office until March 2007, when his three year term finished. The incumbent CTC, Mr Gilles de Kerchove, was appointed in September 2007.
10. Council Act (2001/C 326/01) of 16 October 2001 establishing, in accordance with Article 34 TEU, the Protocol to the Convention on Mutual Assistance in Criminal Matters between the Member States of the EU, OJ C326, 21.11.2001.
11. It should be noted that there were clear difficulties in Parliament that prevented passage of the 2nd Anti-money Laundering Directive until post-9/11 norms changed the perception of decision-makers over terrorism. While this means that, intitially, there was no wide-spread recognition of a need for EU level action, it also strengthens the argument that the emerging norm to join into the ‘war on terror’ did bring decision-makers more in line with EU CTF priorities. It also should be noted that the subsequent passage of the 3rd Anti-money Laundering Directive has been arguably helped along by Member State lobbying, as de Goede suggests was the case on the part of the UK (de Goede 2008, p. 98).
12. However, it is worthwhile recalling that, facing the post-cold war rise of transnational organised crime, the EU succeeded to adopt money-laundering instruments, including the first directive on money-laundering in 1991.
13. Council Directive (2005/60/EC) of 26 October 2005 on the prevention of the use of the financial system for the purpose of money laundering and terrorist financing, OJ L309, 25.11.2005.
14. This establishes rules for payment service providers to send information on the payer throughout the payment chain; it serves to implement SR VII on wire transfers.
15. In combination with the third anti-money laundering directive, this directive implements SR VI on alternative remittances.
16. The Council decided to rely on the Council Secretariat for the implementation process.
17. See doc. 10826/07, 21.06.2007.
18. A revised version of the strategy was endorsed by the Council on 24/25 July 2008.