Europol and its Influence on EU Policy-making on Organized Crime: Analyzing Governance Dynamics and Opportunities

Abstract

While issues relating to the development, legitimacy and accountability of the European Police Office, Europol, have been intensively discussed in political and academic circles, the actual impact of Europol on policy-making in the European Union has yet to receive scholarly attention. By investigating the evolution and the role of Europol's organized crime reports, this article elaborates on whether Europol has been able to exert an influence beyond its narrowly defined mandate. Theoretically informed by the assumptions of experimentalist governance, the article argues that the different legal systems and policing traditions of EU member states have made it difficult for the EU to agree on a common understanding on how to fight against organized crime. This lack of consensus, which has translated into a set of vague and broadly formulated framework goals and guidelines, has enabled Europol to position its Organized Crime Threat Assessments as the point of reference in the respective EU policy-making area. Europol's interest in improving its institutional standing thereby converged with the interest of different member states to use Europol as a socialization platform to broadcast their ideas and to ‘Europeanize’ their national counter-organized crime policy.

Key words:

• European Union
• Europol
• Organized crime reports
• policy-making
• experimentalist governance

Acknowledgements

The authors wish to thank the editors of this special issue, as well as John Occhipinti for his comments. The authors would also like to acknowledge the financial support of the Foundation for Sciences and Technology, Portugal, and of the Austrian Science Fund (FWF) (P 23341-G11 – the role of supranational institutions in EU Justice and Home Affairs).

Notes

1 See the homepage of Europol: http://www.europol.europa.eu/index.asp?page = introduction (accessed 6 April 2011).

2 The selection guidelines mainly consisted in the usage of a list of 11 characteristics of organized crime groups: only the groups which had at least six of those 11 features were to be taken into consideration in the national reports (van der Heijden, 1996).

3 By the time the Europol Convention entered into force, Europol had become competent to deal with ‘the trafficking of illegal drugs and nuclear and radioactive substances, illegal immigrant smuggling, the trade in human beings… motor vehicle crime and terrorism’ (Occhipinti, 2003, p. 60).

4 The 2005 report constitutes an exception to this development, as it contained no recommendations. However, this is not related to a sudden change of strategy, but to the fact that the recommendations started to be understood as more relevant. They were hence taken out of the open version of the report and kept only in the restricted version (personal interview with Commission official, May 2008, Brussels).