Introduction to the Special Issue on Police Accountability in Europe

Abstract

This Introduction contextualises and overviews articles published in this special issue of Policing and Society. These articles were originally presented at a symposium entitled: "Policing and Accountability in Europe: Designing European Police Networks", held at the European Institute of Public Administration in Maastricht in September 2001. In democracies, the operational performance of the police is always accompanied by the quest to account for them. In this Introduction I argue that, given the nature of the Third Pillar arrangements for the governance of police co-operation in Europe, the most natural way to achieve police accountability in the European context is through national parliaments. This is not a position with which all scholars in this field agree. Therefore, this special issue of Policing and Society contains some lively debate. Contributions include articles by Erwin Muller on police accountability in the Netherlands; Willy Bruggerman on the accountability of Europol; Monica den Boer, Ian Loader and Neil Walker on aspects of supranational policing in Europe and their various views of the attendant shortcomings of its accountability mechanisms (and appropriate remedies); and lastly an account of the 'policing field' by James Sheptycki which demonstrates how fragmented and variable policing is and thus how far our discussions about the accountability of policing need to extend. This special issue of Policing and Society contributes to the challenge to define a research programme that would analyse the main characteristics of the accountability issue in the transnational context of the contemporary European Union and beyond.

Keywords:

• Police Accountability
• Transnational Policing
• Third Pillar
• Police Co-operation