Fighting terrorism at the local level: the European Union, radicalisation prevention and the negotiation of subsidiarity

ABSTRACT

In this article, we investigate how the EU mobilises a spatio-temporal imaginary of the “local” in its counter-radicalisation activities as a means of navigating subsidiarity principles and expanding its remit as a “holistic security actor” (cf. Baker-Beall [2016]. The European Union’s fight against terrorism: discourse, policies, identity. Manchester: Manchester University Press). Extant work on the EU’s terrorism prevention efforts has focused on how the organisation constructs transnational terror threats that require supranational, EU-level responses. Our research makes an original contribution to these literatures by demonstrating how the EU also seeks to intervene “below” the level of the nation state. EU counter-radicalisation works directly with subnational actors in municipalities, cities, and frontline public services across Member States. Employing the first systematic analysis of the EU’s Radicalisation Awareness Network (RAN) outputs, we demonstrate how “the local” frames pre-emptive counter-terrorism interventions as “upstream”. “Closer”, or “localised”, reads as “earlier” in this discourse. We also unpack how EU institutions and Member States have voiced concerns about the circumvention of subsidiarity (through engagement with local actors across the Union), by criticising the “effectiveness” of RAN. While the European Commission has taken steps towards addressing these grievances, its proposals reflect a further renegotiation and repositioning of the EU as a security “facilitator” across spaces deemed simultaneously local and transnational.

KEYWORDS:

• Counter-radicalisation
• European Union
• Radicalisation Awareness Network
• terrorism prevention
• radicalisation prevention
• subsidiarity

Introduction

As scholars of International Politics, our attention is often drawn to the international and transnational domains. Indeed, academic literature from Migration Studies and Security Studies frequently attests that the European Union (EU) “operationalises” international challenges to consolidate and extend its governance remit. Scholars have pointed to the EU’s construction of a “migration crisis” that centralises the transnational dynamics of irregular migration flows and opens space for remit expansion by its institutions (Kaunert and Léonard 2012, Vianelli 2017a, 2017b). An international frame is also typically applied to the problem of terrorism and is understood to inform the EU’s radicalisation prevention work, contributing to the expansion of its governance sphere. Here, “the notion of ‘radicalisation’ helps to provide legitimacy for the development of a complex mode of governance, which extends out from the European level and cuts across national and local boundaries” (Baker-Beall 2016, p. 143).

While such analyses focus on how the framing of threats as “international” has enabled the EU to expand its remit as a “holistic security actor” (Baker-Beall 2016, p. 177), our article foregrounds how a spatio-temporal imaginary of the “local” functions similarly within the EU’s radicalisation prevention work. A local frame, we argue, opens space for EU action against terrorism not just at the frontiers of Europe or at the transnational level, but at the heart of cities and towns throughout the Union, contributing to the organisation’s efforts to carve out a governance mandate that sits above that of Member States. These developments can be located within broader EU claims of a “Europe of the Regions”, which also endeavour to “connect localities” at the EU level, engaging sub-national actors in the project of a federal Europe (Loughlin 1996).

In the field of EU counter-terrorism, appeals to the local level are not only spatially articulated but also operate via a “counter-radicalisation” ontology with significant temporal dimensions. The radicalisation ontology (Heath-Kelly 2013), while fluid and contested, imagines that early or “upstream” intervention through social policy and frontline services can divert someone from a progressively dangerous path towards terrorism. This framing speaks to the commonality between radicalisation and social crime prevention (Bjørgo 2016, Hardy 2020, Johansen 2020) – highlighting how social policy’s local frontline services are steadily being recruited to serve “preventive” and anticipatory functions.

Importantly, the EU’s subsidiarity architecture has also shaped this focus on locality. In general, subsidiarity refers to the principle by which Member States retain control over certain policy domains, such as national security, unless it is multi-laterally agreed that EU coordination and action could provide added value beyond these retained competencies. The long and nuanced history of EU subsidiarity has been documented elsewhere (Barroche 2007, 2012). Significantly for our analysis, such genealogies have highlighted the concept’s ambiguity and its consequent malleability as a resource for EU actors operating at different levels. As such, subsidiarity has political as well as strictly legal connotations, and can be mobilised to support a “sovereigntist” reading, favoured by Member States, or a “federalist” reading, typically deployed by the European Commission (Barroche 2007, 2012). Here, as in the Europe of the Regions discourse, an ostensible commitment to subsidiarity allows the Commission to soothe Eurosceptic complaints of EU overreach while advancing its federalist ambitions (Barroche 2007, 2012).

This reading of subsidiarity chimes with our analysis, where we chart how the EU has navigated its apparent constraints and produced a distinctive field of knowledge and practice through the creation of transnational networks of local radicalisation prevention practitioners, such as the Radicalisation Awareness Network (RAN). The dual political meaning of subsidiarity, however, ensures that such efforts to expand the EU’s governance remit do not pass unchecked by Member States and other EU institutions. We also explore how these actors have pushed back against EU encroachment and show how attempts to reassert national sovereignty in the field of radicalisation prevention use the discourse of “effectiveness”. This analysis highlights how the EU’s own legal definition of subsidiarity, as expressed in Article 5 of the so-called Maastricht Treaty where it is understood in terms of the perceived effectiveness of EU action compared with “action taken at national, regional or local level” (see European Union 2012, p. 6, n.d.), has been increasingly used to challenge the organisation’s incursion into its constitutive nations.

To develop these arguments, our article provides the first systematic discourse analysis of RAN, its creation and operations, and the High-Level Commission Expert Group on Radicalisation (HLCEG-R) – which redesigned and refreshed the EU’s approach to prevention. While RAN initially promised to allow the EU to navigate national subsidiarity constraints by connecting local and transnational spheres, persistent cross-institutional battles have resulted in at least three iterations of the network, whose “added-value” and effectiveness have increasingly been called into question. Our analysis reveals how subsidiarity claims are an important hidden transcript behind these narratives, enabling critics to claw back some operational space from the EU’s radicalisation prevention structure, causing the organisation to once more reimagine itself as a multi-level security interlocutor.

European Security and counter-radicalisation

The steady development of the EU security agenda has manifested through the creation of an “Area of Freedom, Security and Justice” (AFSJ) and a “Common Foreign and Security Policy” (CFSP), operating within the frame of Member State cooperation, followed by an extension of the EU’s security ambit into external regions through the European Neighbourhood Policy (Manners 2013). Alongside such measures, the EU has simultaneously developed a range of transnational organisations and networks which govern internal security. These internal protection policies frame migration, organised crime and terrorism as the main security threats to the Union (Léonard 2010, Kirchner and Sperling 2018), to be combatted by strengthening transnational agencies such as Europol and FRONTEX.

A dedicated literature explores how the EU’s counter terrorism policies have developed in response to “transnational” threats, illuminating the policies' history (Bossong 2013), effectiveness (Bures 2006) and coherence (Argomaniz 2011), and enhancing our understanding of EU security policy formation. Further contributions have used such developments to interrogate the EU’s evolution as a “holistic security actor” (Zwolski 2012, Baker-Beall 2016), speaking to broader work on EU “actorness”, which assesses the organisation’s ability to generate foreign and security policies that reflect its guiding principles and are accepted by its Member States and external partners (Kaunert 2010, p. 658). As such, scholars have identified EU security frameworks' co-option of “new” security challenges like climate change (Zwolski 2012), and highlighted how the framing of terrorism as a transnational threat with both internal and external dimensions has enabled the EU to expand its governance remit (Baker-Beall 2016, p. 177).

Studies of EU counter-terrorism have also centred the organisation’s specific attempts to develop competence in preventing radicalisation, foregrounding its persistent focus on engaging Muslim communities (Baker-Beall 2016) and emerging efforts to intervene online (Léonard et al. 2020). Several contributions have questioned the effectiveness of the EU as a counter-radicalisation actor (Bakker 2015, Martins and Ziegler 2018), with some expressing specific scepticism about the potential of RAN (Bossong 2014). While these interventions have highlighted recurring deficiencies in EU counter-radicalisation policy, they are reticent as to what criticisms of effectiveness reveal about contestations over subsidiarity. Our article speaks to this gap by commenting not on the efficacy of EU counter-radicalisation per se, but on what critiques of an effectiveness deficit mean for different EU actors in a broader political-institutional sense.

Importantly, while much work on EU counter-radicalisation remains pre-occupied by a transnational frame, some have begun to unpack the relevance of a local level to the “fight against terrorism”. Contributions have highlighted the EU’s securitisation of localised public services within its expanding governance agenda (de Goede and Simon 2013), pointing to the development of a “European Security Culture” that prioritises early, preventive action against perceived terrorist threats (de Goede 2011, Baker-Beall 2016). Others have specifically noted the EU’s creation of fractious transnational networks of security professionals – dubbed “professional managers of unease” – that “transcend national frontiers and localize the spaces of political decision-making” (Bigo 2008, pp. 12–13). As we explore further below, although these insights hold promise for the study of the EU’s RAN (de Goede and Simon 2013, p. 332), the network is yet to receive sustained attention.

While extant treatments of EU counter-radicalisation have begun to shed light on the importance of local actors, they have dedicated little space to exploring how this development has been led by, and increasingly borrows from, the EU’s broader crime prevention work. An early driver of the “localism” approach in European crime prevention (and later, terrorism prevention) was the European Forum on Urban Security (EFUS) – formed in 1987 as an NGO oriented towards knowledge exchange and partnerships between European cities. EFUS has continually lobbied for local integration and social service-based interventions to prevent crime – and terrorism – often receiving EU funding for their work. In 2006, the EFUS SECUCITIES project (funded by the Commission) turned its attention to terrorism, arguing for the first time that it should no longer be securitised and “hived off” from crime policy. Instead, the situational and social measures used in crime prevention should be applied to terrorism, introducing localism, frontline workers and local authorities to the agenda of European Security (Shaftoe and Turksen 2006, p. 19).

The EU’s RAN represents the most recent and significant embodiment of these principles and it is therefore the focus of this article. We detail the history of RAN below to situate our discourse analysis. For the purposes of this literature review, it is important to underline that little academic literature has engaged substantively with RAN. Gordillo and Ragazzi (2017) explore RAN as a core institution in the production of a European Security Agenda – but frame RAN’s localism through Nikolas Rose’s thesis on advanced liberalism and governing through society. On this view, the communities deemed “suspect” or vulnerable to radicalisation by RAN are simultaneously conceived as the vehicles with which to deliver security policy, through assumptions made about the “credibility” of local religious and community figures in halting radicalisation (Gordillo and Ragazzi 2017, p. 57).

While the chapter provides an essential analysis of RAN’s appropriation of the “local” in its security work, the political-institutional dynamic of what localism means for the EU Security Union is not considered. Other mentions of RAN similarly neglect to examine its institutional dynamics as an EU foray into local towns and cities, and the negotiations – and contestations – of subsidiarity that this involves. Such omissions may be attributed to the limited treatment that RAN typically receives within broader studies of EU counter-radicalisation and counter-terrorism (e.g. Baker-Beall 2016, pp. 151–163, Martins and Ziegler 2018), or to a diverting focus on the network’s intervention in specific sectors, such as education (Mattsson et al. 2016) and religion (Foret and Markoviti 2020).

By contrast, our contribution explores the political significance of RAN for the EU as a security actor, its production of a spatio-temporal nexus where local proximity is associated with upstream prevention, and the tensions over subsidiarity that this distinctive, preventive localism agenda has created between the European Commission, RAN, and other actors, such as the Committee of the Regions and Member States.

Methodology

Our article provides the first substantial discourse analysis of the EU’s RAN and associated bodies. “Traditional” work on EU counter-terrorism by scholars, including Argomaniz, Bossong and Bures, typically advances a “problem-solving” frame that provides good-faith assessments of the EU’s policy effectiveness, bypassing any critical engagement with the nature and function of the organisation’s counter-terrorism discourses (Baker-Beall 2016, pp. 15–16). By contrast, our approach is informed by critical counter-terrorism literatures, which explore how discourse facilitates “an embedding of “expert knowledge” on “radicalisation”” that enlists frontline professionals in pre-emptive security practices (Baker-Beall 2016, p. 162, cf. Heath-Kelly 2013), and also is politically consequential for EU governance. While particular discursive representations, or language, provide the entry-point for such an analysis, discourse itself is, therefore, conceived in broader terms of its productive power.

Practically, this approach necessitates our engagement with a wide range of written documents. As our analysis is primarily concerned with RAN, it takes in official documents publicly released on the network’s website between its inception in 2011 and the present day. This corpus includes documents from all of RAN’s annual “High Level Conferences” and plenary meetings in the period, which help us to trace the network’s overall evolution. It also includes the complete activities of the RAN working groups on policing (RAN POL), health and social care (RAN HEALTH), and local authorities (RAN LOCAL) during this timeframe. While the limited extant work on RAN has focused on its intervention in education and religious sectors, as noted above, our concern is for how a “local” frame is mobilised in the network’s materials. RAN LOCAL clearly speaks directly to this theme. A local sphere of action also animates the other working groups we consider, focusing on key localised public service professionals.

In addition to RAN’s own materials, our analysis also incorporates a wider range of sources. Our corpus, therefore, includes documents from a broader timeframe and a set of actors, such as those produced directly by the European Commission, the European Council and the Committee of the Regions. Examining these documents enables us to trace RAN’s formation and – later – its contestation in relation to broader trends in EU counter-terrorism policy and governance. While our empirical analysis is the first to engage with many of our primary texts, where necessary and available, we also consult a limited number of secondary sources to provide further context.

After assembling our primary corpus, we subjected our documents to a qualitative, thematic analysis (Braun and Clarke 2014). This process initially involved identifying keywords and phrases that expressed RAN’s localism. Although the “local” is sometimes directly invoked by RAN, it is often merely implied in references to the “community” police (RAN POL) and “frontline” practitioners (RAN HEALTH) deemed close enough to target groups to be able to detect supposed vulnerability to radicalisation at a very early stage (e.g. RAN HEALTH 2012, RAN POL 2012). Once we had identified how the local was represented we could then aggregate our analysis to detect common patterns or themes (Baker-Beall 2016, p. 43). Here, our extant understanding of crime prevention discourse guided our interpretation of how texts borrowed from social or situational crime prevention philosophies. This thematic analysis, coupled with further assessment of how the varied documents in our corpus interacted, then enabled us to evaluate the discursive function of the “local”, both for RAN’s counter-radicalisation efforts and for EU governance more broadly.

Understanding the history of RAN

The EU has carved out the prevention of terrorism as a specific area of competence in response to the supposed extreme and continuous threat of terror attacks “anywhere, anytime, anyone” (Solana, 2005 cited in Baker-Beall 2016, p. 1). The requirement to “prevent” terrorism is codified as the first of four pillars in the EU’s 2005 counter-terrorism strategy, followed by the remaining pillars of “protect”, “pursue” and “respond” (European Council 2005, p. 3). Although the European Commission described this strategy in 2010 as the “main reference framework for EU action in this field”, a review of the policy requested by the European Parliament progressively incorporated counter-terrorism into a broader EU “Internal Security Strategy” (ISS) targeted at keeping pace with “future challenges” (European Commission 2010b, p. 2, European Council 2010, p. 33). The ISS cites terrorism as the primary threat to EU security positioned as a “basic right” of European populations (European Council 2010, p. 19). The document’s overarching framing of security as an urgent matter of European rights and values is consistent with the EU’s tendency, already observed by critical counter-terrorism scholars, of narrating terrorism as a threat to its identity (Baker-Beall 2016). Consequently, EU counter-terrorism policy has become an important site through which the organisation’s identity can be continually (re)produced (Baker-Beall 2016, p. 172).

Given that terrorism has become a central issue for the Security Union – sometimes framed with the rhetoric of existential threat, it is perhaps unsurprising that its prevention has become a key concern. As noted above, the inherent temporality of terror prevention is anticipation and pre-emption – that is, intervening before a terror attack occurs. In the realms of prevention work this temporality has been further cemented through a specific focus on radicalisation. The ontology of radicalisation advances the premise that terror attacks can be prevented not only before they happen but also perhaps before they have even been considered (Baker-Beall 2016, p. 185). To this end, the EU has long been pre-occupied by a desire to inculcate the “best” ways for preventing radicalisation leading to violent extremism and terrorism within and across its Member States. Policy transfer between those responsible for preventing terrorism was an explicit goal of early EU-funded initiatives, such as the European Policy Planners Network on Countering Polarisation and Radicalisation, hosted by London think-tank, the Institute for Strategic Dialogue. Indeed, the EU has founded successive networks of experts designed to share counter-radicalisation knowledge and best practice throughout the Union. Early iterations included the Expert Group on Violent Radicalisation (EGVR), 2006–2008, and the European Network of Experts on Radicalisation (ENER), 2008–2010 (European Commission 2010a, p. 4, 2010b, p. 5).

Despite these initial attempts at cultivating networks of counter-radicalisation expertise, the European Commission’s 2010 review of EU counter-terrorism policy identified a need to establish the “most effective” ways of countering radicalisation and recruitment and survey Member State experiences in these fields (European Commission 2010b, p. 5). Such language, coupled with the ISS’s preference for a collaborative and multi-agency civil society approach to tackling terrorism (European Council 2010, pp. 22–24), set the scene for the EU’s creation of RAN. Although RAN is not mentioned directly in the initial ISS document, it emerges from the five-step ISS action plan later released by the EC, under Objective 2 (Prevent terrorism and address radicalisation and recruitment), Action 1 (Empower communities to prevent radicalisation and recruitment) (European Commission 2010c, p. 7). Much like the networks that preceded it, RAN is conceived as a collective of European practitioners who convene to share expertise in countering radicalisation (RAN 2013, p. 1). As senior RAN consultant Maarten van de Donk describes, the network aims “to connect people who are dealing with radicalisation throughout Europe, and our main goal within that is to build an exchange of knowledge and an exchange of discussion to find out about violent extremism” (Fitzgerald 2016, p. 131).

Such exchanges are primarily organised around what are now nine working groups, covering different areas of counter-radicalisation, including policing, healthcare and municipalities. Although the need for more information sharing and collaboration between such public agencies is a recurring theme throughout RAN’s papers, its working groups remain ironically siloed, coming together only in occasional collaborative events, or at RAN’s wider annual meetings. Nevertheless, the examples above indicate how the EU is using the network to constitute a field of knowledge through which terrorism – previously understood in terms of organisational and strategic violence – is framed through a broad conception of crime prevention where social policy sectors are responsibilised to intervene, alongside other mechanisms of government. Crucially, in addition to its temporal dimension of early, pre-emptive action, this field of knowledge is also organised around a distinctive spatial axis that brings together a transnational network of local terror prevention partners.

As we explore further in the next section, a local level is deemed necessary to work effectively with “susceptible individuals” and “vulnerable communities” (European Commission 2010c, p. 7). Such language alludes to a spatio-temporal dynamic of counter-radicalisation in which “local” stands for “upstream” and pre-emptive interventions – a logic borrowed from broader approaches to crime prevention, as noted above. RAN’s broad concern for the local is demonstrated from its very first HLC in 2013, which was explicitly organised around the theme of “Empowering local actors to prevent violent extremism” (RAN 2013, emphasis added). Such actors are further defined as frontline practitioners and those “culturally close” to suspect communities that meet an implied profile of the likely future terrorist offender (RAN 2013, pp. 1–3). As we highlight below, RAN’s mobilisation of a spatio-temporal logic of the local also infuses the statements of its dedicated working groups from their very early stages.

A local sphere of prevention is also useful for the EU in other ways, enabling it to negotiate a distinctive, complex mode of governing around the principle of subsidiarity, where the transnational and local are understood to meet. As counter-terrorism policy is “closely linked to the sovereignty of member states” (Baker-Beall 2016, p. 156), the EU has had to find ways of justifying its encroachment. One way is to present terrorism as a global problem, requiring a transnational solution (as detailed in our introductory section). Another way of negotiating national contexts, which has received little specific attention in the academic literature, is to speak directly to the local level. As we unpack further below, RAN facilitates such an agenda by incorporating municipalities, local counter-terrorism coordinators and frontline practitioners.

Nevertheless, the EU’s negotiation of subsidiarity through its deployment of the radicalisation ontology has caused tensions within and around RAN from its very beginning. RAN was initially created through a partnership of the EC and the Committee of the Regions (CoR) – an EU “advisory body” that represents Europe’s regional and local authorities (CoR 2016b). The CoR has long positioned itself as a subsidiarity “watchdog”, and even has monitoring powers to ensure that the subsidiarity principle is being respected across the Union’s activities (Wassenberg 2020, pp. 157–167). As such, it has sought to emphasise that the ISS (from which RAN stems) must provide “real added value” to Member States (CoR 2011b, p. 2), and later even directly asserts, along with the European Parliament, that the ISS must respect the subsidiarity principle (CoR 2011a, p. 27). The CoR’s increasing concern for subsidiarity is part of a pattern in its official Opinions on a range of topics, which the EC has noted (CoR 2012, p. 31). Such tensions have played out and evolved throughout RAN’s lifespan, recently culminating in its overhaul during a review process, as we discuss below.

Indeed, RAN has had a bumpy trajectory since its inception in 2011. It was already subject to at least two substantive iterations prior to its most recent scrutiny by the Commission in the form of the HLCEG-R. According to de Donk, a “first generation” of RAN, active between 2011 and 2015, gave way in autumn 2015 to a second iteration (Fitzgerald 2016, p. 131). Autumn 2015 also crops up as a regenerative moment in RAN’s own materials, with the RAN POL working group mentioning in November 2015 that it had recently been “rebooted” under new leadership (RAN POL 2015, p. 2). The reasons behind this period of renewal are not articulated within RAN’s own papers. Nevertheless, the timing seems to reflect a 2014 Commission communication that encouraged the network to improve its utility to the Member States, and the subsequent launch in October 2015 of the RAN Centre of Excellence (CoE), designed to lead RAN’s activities and support its stakeholders (Martins and Ziegler 2018, pp. 333–339).

Further evidence suggests that RAN’s initial phase was hampered by an effectiveness deficit – a criticism related to the subsidiarity principle that had also beset its predecessor networks, the EGVR and ENER, and which would continue to plague the collective. Such a critique can be discerned in de Donk’s new desire for RAN to “engage more with academics” and be “more overarching [as a secretariat] than we were before” (Fitzgerald 2016, pp. 131–132). Indeed, at one point, de Donk even directly invokes RAN’s need to “build towards a more sustainable impact” in its second generation (Fitzgerald 2016, p. 132). As we discuss further below, however, in the eyes of its most recent reviewers, these goals have remained largely unachieved. Indeed, concern over RAN’s lack of “impact” became a key theme animating its reappraisal by the HLCEG-R, including the reformation of a Network of Prevent Policymakers. Crucially, this lack of impact is articulated in terms that suggest a dissatisfaction by multiple parties with how the EU has navigated subsidiarity through RAN, and necessitated a renegotiation of the organisation’s relationship with these principles. We explore these themes further in the final section of the article. First, however, we turn to a deeper discussion of the function of the spatio-temporal imaginary of the local both for RAN and for the broader EU.

RAN’s localism: a spatio-temporal nexus of prevention

A spatio-temporal counter-radicalisation ontology, which frames local action which can deliver prevention, is pervasive throughout RAN’s written materials. As noted above, the notion that it is possible to intervene and prevent terror attacks before they occur – and also before they have even been considered – overlaps with broader approaches to crime prevention and shares their propensity to operationalise local rather than national actors. RAN’s materials exhibit frequent references to the existence of a “pre-criminal” temporal phase in which urgent action is required to divert individuals from a (potentially) violent path (e.g. RAN HEALTH 2012, pp. 1–3, 2016b, p. 10, 2020, p. 2, RAN POL 2012, p. 4, 2016a, p. 2, 2016b, pp. 3–4, 2018a, p. 5, 2020, pp. 4–5). The resonance of the counter-radicalisation ontology with broader crime prevention approaches is also articulated in more specific senses throughout RAN. In broad terms, the RAN POL working group, comprising law enforcement officials, is primarily organised around a model of situational crime prevention – the idea that the “pre-criminal” phase is best disrupted by taking action in specific “places of radicalisation”. This theme is discernible in the group’s references to the need to address (violent) “extremist milieus” (e.g. RAN POL 2017b, p. 1, 2018c, p. 3, 2018d, pp. 1–4, 7, 9–12).

By contrast, a model of social crime prevention, which understands corrective action in the pre-criminal phase as a form of care, best characterises the RAN HEALTH working group, comprised frontline healthcare practitioners. In this group, the primary focus is on how targeted mental health interventions can counter an individual’s apparent mental “vulnerability” to radicalisation and violent extremism (e.g. RAN HEALTH 2018a, 2018b, 2019b). Both RAN POL and RAN HEALTH sometimes exhibit aspects of the other’s favoured crime prevention discourse. The combination of these discourses is, however, most strikingly apparent in the RAN LOCAL working group, comprising representatives of European municipalities. Notable examples of this hybrid discourse include the group’s references to tackling “social vulnerability in certain neighbourhoods and groups” (RAN LOCAL 2018, p. 3), and its assertion that (far-right) radicalisation “takes place at the intersection of an enabling environment and a personal trajectory” (RAN LOCAL 2019, p. 7).

Although there are nuances in how specific working groups operationalise the counter-radicalisation ontology, they remain connected by a spatio-temporal focus on the local. As noted above, the local occupies a special position within the counter-radicalisation ontology as the key sphere in which preventive “upstream” counter-terrorism work becomes manageable. Such themes are discernible in both explicit and implicit forms throughout RAN. The statement that “Local is key”, is listed as point five of ten of the “RAN DNA” – an inventory of the network’s guiding principles (e.g. RAN POL 2016a, p. 3). Further specific references to the desirability of the local sphere of preventive action infuse RAN’s working groups. The appropriate level for “concrete implementation” of a national strategy is, the regional and local, following a collaborative multi-agency approach (RAN HEALTH 2016b, p. 6). Intervention with the so-called vulnerable communities is also considered “best done on a local level” (RAN LOCAL 2016a, p. 2).

Although RAN often frames its preference for the local in rather benign, functional terms – as a means through which different public agencies are best coordinated (RAN HEALTH 2016a, p. 2) – a spatio-temporal preference for the local also betrays the insidious racialised aspects of the counter-radicalisation ontology. As Baker-Beall (2016, pp. 20–21, 146) notes, while in recent years the EU has largely departed from an exclusive and explicit focus on violent “Islamic” extremism, a “disproportionate” concern over the activities of Muslim communities remains the subtext of much of its counter-terrorism discourse. Specifically, “the “Muslim” other is thought to represent a member of a community that must be “engaged” if terrorism is to be defeated” (Baker-Beall 2016, p. 142). RAN’s focus on the local is highly relevant to these discursive claims. RAN, in general, is designed to produce knowledge that makes radicalisation “governable” (cf. Baker-Beall 2016, p. 163). On this view, the Muslim Other becomes knowable and controllable only within a local context, with support from local actors. Put differently, the nation-state is both temporally and spatially inept at tackling such “communities”, being too out-of-touch and slow to respond to perceived threats. Such an understanding is exhibited across RAN. The RAN POL working group argues that “[l]ocal communities have an intense knowledge of the ground” (RAN POL 2018b, p. 9) and that such familiarity makes local actors like community police best suited to prevention work (RAN POL 2016a, pp. 2–4). The RAN LOCAL working group concurs in its statement that

Within the local communities there is knowledge of the people who live in your municipality. Information needed to make the right assessments. Individuals that play key roles in their communities are credible and able to use fast, practical, and local interventions, while using their religious or cultural background and connections where needed. (RAN LOCAL 2016a, pp. 2–3)

RAN’s racialised spatio-temporal focus on the local has also been articulated acutely in the context of the Syrian civil war, which has generated concerns about a European migration or “refugee crisis” and about the threat of returning Foreign Terrorist Fighters (FTFs). A major RAN conference held in 2014 positioned returning FTFs explicitly as a problem for cities to address (RAN 2014a, 2014b). Meanwhile, the trauma experienced by FTFs, migrants, and their families – whether in their “origin” countries, en route to the EU, or when resettled – is presumed to constitute a vulnerability to radicalisation (e.g. RAN 2014a, p. 1, 2014b, p. 1, 2016a, 2016b, p. 6, 2018, p. 6, 2019a, p. 5, RAN HEALTH 2018b, RAN LOCAL 2020b, pp. 5–6, RAN POL 2017c, pp. 7–8, RAN Policy & Practice 2018, 2019, pp. 2–4). Such perceived vulnerabilities, in turn, require the interventions of local health workers and increased efforts to “integrate” such individuals into local communities such that societal alienation does not precipitate violence against the “host” nation (e.g. RAN 2014a, p. 1, 2014b, p. 1, 2016a, pp. 6–8, 2016b, p. 1, 3–4, 2018, p. 6, RAN HEALTH 2016c, p. 1, 2019a, RAN LOCAL 2016b, pp. 2–3, 2020b, p. 5, RAN POL 2012, p. 4, 2016c, p. 9, 16–17, RAN Policy & Practice 2018, pp. 9–12, 2019, pp. 2–4, 7–8). Indeed, the arrival of migrants is also narrated as an additional challenge to localised counter-radicalisation “community policing” in that the presence of such racialised “Others” can stimulate far-right extremism and spark a cycle of “reciprocal radicalisation” (e.g. RAN POL 2016c, pp. 16–17, 2017a, 2018d, p. 7).

RAN’s spatio-temporal association of prevention with the local level also serves further purposes for the network and for the EU more broadly. Operating as a transnational network of local counter-radicalisation practitioners, RAN frequently bypasses national structures. RAN’s localism enables the EU to negotiate subsidiarity constraints by speaking directly to local actors, such as frontline practitioners, who are the “eyes and ears on a local level” (RAN LOCAL 2020a, p. 2) and the core recipients of the network’s training programmes. Indeed, it is also striking how the RAN Collection of “inspiring best practices” is primarily organised around examples of counter-radicalisation activities and initiatives derived from, or delivered at, local, often city or regional, level (RAN 2019b, 2021). RAN’s ability to connect the transnational (EU) and local levels was also highlighted by its senior consultant. Here, de Donk suggests that RAN’s strengths lie in its constitution as a “virtual network” that operates “around and about Europe” and “across state borders” (Fitzgerald 2016, p. 132). More specifically, he states:

I would say that one of the advantages we have is that we are not directly involved in radicalisation work as made by states. Being commissioned by the European Commission and, for example, not by national governments, we can easily reach out to most countries. We are kind of neutral, in that sense […]. (Fitzgerald 2016, emphasis original)

As we explore further in the following section, the EU’s negotiation of national subsidiarity constraints through RAN’s local focus has become increasingly perceived not as one of the network’s major strengths but perhaps as its primary weakness.

Subsidiarity bites back?

RAN has been subject to intense criticism in recent years, reflecting increasing concern for how the EU configures its relationship with the local, national and supranational. One of RAN’s founding institutions – the Committee of the Regions, the primary European institutional representative of municipalities – has been rather vocal in this regard. In a dedicated 2016 Opinion document, the CoR implies that an effectiveness deficit persists within RAN (CoR 2016c). Although it “highlights the important role of [RAN] and the newly established centre of excellence”, it also “Underlines the need for an EU network to be developed to help achieve stronger EU local and regional collaboration on combatting radicalisation and violent extremism and terrorism” (CoR 2016c, p. 4). It also “further encourages” RAN to continue “the development of effective preventive measures, especially by improving early detection of signs of radicalisation at local level” (CoR 2016c, p. 4).

The CoR then proceeds to admonish RAN for insufficient “effort” in engaging smaller cities and communities, and for its insufficient dissemination of expertise between local and national levels. It asks for the European Commission to “assist Member States […] by sharing the information and experience gained by local and regional authorities” and to “focus on further collecting and publicising best practices”, already collated by the RAN CoE (CoR 2016c, p. 8). The underlying theme of these criticisms is that RAN is failing to provide the Member States with the “added value” that has always been important to the CoR’s conception of subsidiarity, as noted above. The criticisms also imply that the CoR desires a greater role in overseeing the local sphere of counter-radicalisation and counter-terrorism – a theme we return to below.

In response to the CoR’s Opinion, the European Commission largely rejected the claims made against RAN (European Commission 2016). Indeed, its response suggests some bemusement about the criticisms raised by the CoR and seeks to highlight how RAN has already adopted or is already developing effective measures in the targeted areas. The Commission directly refutes the CoR’s calls for an anti-radicalisation network, connecting European localities by proffering the example of the extant RAN CoE (European Commission 2016, p. 44). It also points to the current work by the RAN CoE and the new RAN LOCAL working group to answer charges about the network’s insufficient dissemination of best practices and engagement with local actors (European Commission 2016, pp. 44–46).

Despite the Commission’s spirited defence of RAN in 2016, by 2017, it had initiated a formal review of EU prevention policies, subjecting RAN to further scrutiny and subsequently targeting the network for overhaul. Following a series of terror attacks in major European cities in 2017 – in Belgium, Paris, and Manchester – the High Level Commission Expert Group on Radicalisation (HLCEG-R) was formed (European Commission 2017c, pp. 3–4). The HLCEG-R responds to a sense that extant EU counter-radicalisation and counter-terrorism work is failing and falling behind “new challenges” (e.g. European Commission 2017a, p. 9) – a criticism that has always haunted the EU’s activities in this field (as above). Given such a focus on “new challenges”, the group is initially concerned with evaluating the EU’s approach to radicalisation in prisons, online terrorist propaganda and returning FTFs (European Commission 2017c, pp. 3–4).

At this stage, RAN was still discussed in a rather positive light, reflecting the Commission’s prior defence of the network. In this view, RAN has undertaken valuable work at the “forefront” of the EU’s counter-terror response, and the HLCEG-R review is intended only to “bolster” this further (European Commission 2017c, pp. 3–4). Despite such claims, between 2017 and 2018 the HLCEG-R advanced a critique of the “coordination and cooperation, outreach and impact” of EU prevention schemes (European Commission 2017a, pp. 21–22), which progressively targets the network singling it out for reform.

A special report by the European Court of Auditors (ECoA) is particularly striking for its extended two-page critique of RAN (ECoA 2018, pp. 22–24). Indeed, throughout 2017 and 2018, RAN is increasingly criticised in official EC and HLCEG-R documents for its insufficient dissemination of expertise and engagement with the Member States (e.g. European Commission 2017b, p. 17, ECoA 2018, pp. 4–5, 22–23, 31), including its provision of training that lacks specificity to the policy frameworks and requirements of national contexts (e.g. European Commission 2017b, p. 17, ECoA 2018, pp. 22–24, HLCEG-R 2017b, p. 14). Its failure to work with external parties or “third countries” is similarly flagged (e.g. European Commission 2017b, p. 17, HLCEG-R 2017a, p. 15, 2017b, p. 14; HLCEG-R sub-group (Prevention of Radicalisation) 2017, p. 6). RAN’s lack of effectiveness and impact is further narrated as its alleged inability to identify research gaps (e.g. HLCEG-R 2017b, p. 14) and evaluate the success of its measures (e.g. European Commission 2017b, p. 17, ECoA 2018, pp. 25–29, 32). It is also accused of being insufficiently transparent (HLCEG-R sub-group (Prevention of Radicalisation) 2017, p. 6).

In sum, the criticisms levelled at RAN during the HLCEG-R review process suggest that its “added value is not maximised in practice” (ECoA 2018, p. 22). The centrality of “added value” and “effectiveness” in these retorts can be read as coded critiques of how the EU uses the spatio-temporal ontology of radicalisation to navigate subsidiarity. The HLCEG-R review is marked by a notable desire for the Member States to be invited back into the EU’s terror prevention architecture. Many of the criticisms come directly from the Member States themselves via surveys of their experiences (ECoA 2018). A key criticism is that RAN’s focus on local practitioners sidelines substantive engagement with national policymakers and those working at EU level (e.g. ECoA 2018, p. 24, HLCEG-R 2017b, p. 14). Additionally, RAN’s lack of “permanent structures” appears as a cause for concern (European Commission 2017a, p. 19, 2017b, p. 17). The RAN CoE is managed through a four-year contract with an external supplier, signalling to some of its transience and attending lack of long-term effectiveness (e.g. European Commission 2017b, p. 17, HLCEG-R 2017b, p. 14).

A solution initially proposed to this particular issue of institutional impermanence is the creation of a dedicated EU Centre on Radicalisation, designed to operate as a centralised, EU-level structure (HLCEG-R 2017b, p. 7). Yet in the debate over the desirability of such a centre, further tensions over subsidiarity arose reflecting persistent EU power dynamics. The so-called EU “core” or “EU2” of France and Germany appeared enthusiastic about this novel EU institution (HLCEG-R 2017b, p. 7). Other Member States, however, reportedly “stressed the need for flexibility and avoiding overly heavy structures. There was some scepticism as to the establishment of overly centralised or bureaucratic structures” (HLCEG-R sub-group (Prevention of Radicalisation) 2017, p. 6). Indeed, it seems that the latter view ultimately prevailed. By Spring 2018, the proposed EU Centre had been dropped from the HLCEG-R agenda in favour of taking more gradual steps to enhance cooperation and collaboration between the Member States (HLCEG-R 2018, p. 20). The subsequent solution attempted to bring the Member States back into the fold – the HLCEG-R sits above RAN and provides a Member State-led “Steering Board” and “Task Force” for knowledge sharing at the European level (HLCEG-R 2018, p. 14). Additionally, a Network of Prevent Policymakers (NPP) will be reinvigorated to enhance counter-radicalisation coordination between the national policymakers of the Member States (HLCEG-R 2018, p. 14, 17; HLCEG-R sub-group (Prevention of Radicalisation) 2017, p. 5).

Such a focus on better engaging with the Member States is also explicitly articulated in EU Security Commissioner Julian King’s remarks to the RAN HLC in October 2018. According to King, the HLCEG-R process aims “to better focus our actions towards the needs and policy priorities in Member States” (RAN 2018, p. 2). As he continues, “whilst local practitioners are undoubtedly best placed to provide the necessary interventions, there is often a need for further resources, or other forms of support at a national or European level” (RAN 2018, p. 3). For King, this means that, in addition to the provisions the HLCEG-R makes for the steering board, NPP, and task force, RAN should now focus its activities on “Policy and Practice” events – forums where national policymakers are reintegrated into the RAN architecture and can learn from the local sphere of counter-radicalisation (RAN 2018, pp. 4–5, HLCEG-R 2018, pp. 14, 17; HLCEG-R sub-group (Prevention of Radicalisation) 2017, p. 5)

Despite such an increasing emphasis on the national contexts of its Member States tensions regarding subsidiarity persist in the EC’s reforms of RAN. Further evidence suggests that the EC has not so much found a new respect for subsidiarity as it has renegotiated it by positioning itself as an interlocutor or “facilitator” across local, national and international frames. These tendencies are particularly apparent in the latest output from the HLCEG-R process – a Commission strategy document for the prevention of radicalisation (European Commission 2021). On the one hand, this document suggests that the Commission seeks to intervene “below”, connecting localities to their nation states and the broader European context. The Commission proposes an “EU Overview” of local prevention efforts (European Commission 2021, p. 6) and, in the case of an “EU Cities against Radicalisation” initiative, positions itself explicitly as an organisational “bridge between actions at city level and national level” (European Commission 2021, p. 12).

On the other hand, the Commission also seeks to intervene “above”, connecting Europe and its members with “third countries” through “EU level” analysis and recommendations of how such states might be better engaged (European Commission 2021, pp. 9–10). A sentence at the end of the document encapsulates this multifaceted approach to the EU’s expansion as an “holistic security actor”, stating that the EC aims to

enhance the cooperation with and among stakeholders at local, national, European and international level and will strengthen our evidence base and capabilities of preventing radicalisation in a more effective way at EU level. (European Commission 2021, p. 13, emphasis added).

Nevertheless, such attempts at remit expansion remain inherently unstable. As noted above, the CoR, once a founding partner of RAN, became increasingly critical of the network in its second generation. Many of the same themes were later taken up by the HLCEG-R review, in which the CoR participated “actively” (CoR 2017, pp. 40–41), precipitating RAN’s third generation. However, the CoR’s participation in this process suggests that an institutional battle over who is best suited to the role of multi-level counter-radicalisation facilitator may yet reignite between it and the EC. Like the Commission, the CoR also understands itself as “the main interlocutor dealing with subnational governments” (CoR 2016a, pp. 30–31). Indeed, an anniversary history of the CoR has recently highlighted how such a self-understanding can be traced back to the body’s earliest days, where archives show the committee’s desire for “federalism and subsidiarity [to] join forces” (see Wassenberg 2020, p. 70). Such evidence suggests that political tensions regarding subsidiarity remain baked into the institutional framework of RAN and will continue to restructure how the EU is able to deploy the spatio-temporal counter-radicalisation logic of the local to expand its remit.

Conclusion

In this article, we have explored how the EU has employed a spatio-temporal imaginary of the “local” in its counter-radicalisation programmes as a means of navigating subsidiarity and expanding its remit as a “holistic security actor”. Extant work on the EU’s terror prevention efforts has focused on how the organisation constructs terrorism as a transnational threat that requires a supranational, EU-level response. Our research makes a substantive contribution to these literatures by demonstrating how the EU also seeks to intervene “below” the level of the nation state. On this view, the EU bolsters its “actorness” in the realms of counter-radicalisation by speaking directly to subnational actors in municipalities, cities, and frontline public services across its Member States.

Using evidence from RAN’s major working groups, high-level conferences and plenary meetings, we dissected how the network borrows from broader approaches to crime prevention within a counter-radicalisation ontology that understands the local level as the optimal sphere for “upstream” pre-emptive interventions. We further argued that such a focus on the local has been useful for the EU more broadly, enabling it to navigate the subsidiarity principle by connecting subnational actors to transnational EU structures, sidestepping nation states to expand its remit as a “holistic security actor”.

However, this approach has not been without its controversies. In the final section of the article, we charted how criticisms, regarding RAN’s perceived lack of effectiveness, have resurfaced in recent years, reflecting inter-institutional battles between the European Commission and the Committee of the Regions, and the growing frustrations of EU Member States that feel sidelined by RAN’s appeals to the local level of terror prevention. While the Commission has attempted to reform RAN in a way that ostensibly invites Member States back into the fold, we provided further evidence to suggest that the EU has simply found a new way of navigating subsidiarity and expanding its remit, positioning itself as a counter-radicalisation “facilitator” operating between local, national and international spheres.

Our analysis also speaks to broader themes in European integration, and particularly to work that interrogates the existence, nature or purpose of a Europe of the Regions (e.g. Keating 2008). Some have urged caution in interpreting the European Commission’s increasing appeals to subnational actors – through, for example, its award of Structural Funds to European regions from the late 1980s – as an active strategy for bypassing Member States and recruiting federalist “allies” (Keating 2008, pp. 630–631). Others have highlighted how nation state contexts have been effectively bypassed from “below”, with some subnational actors seeking to form transnational, EU-level activist networks (Tatham 2010), particularly targeting issues such as climate change (Kern 2019, pp. 130–133). Much less has been written about the political function that a spatio-temporal focus on the local level serves for the EU itself in leading contemporary policy domains. Our analysis of the EU’s counter-radicalisation policy suggests potential parallels with other pressing transnational issues that are navigated via the local level, such as climate change, opening new pathways for future research.

Acknowledgements

The authors would like to thank the two anonymous reviewers and Sadi Shanaah for their incisive comments on earlier versions of this article.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by H2020 European Research Council project “Neoliberal Terror: The Radicalisation of Social Policy in Europe” [851022].