EU internal security goverance and national risk assessments: towards a common technocratic model?

ABSTRACT

In the context of the European Union's (EU) expanding role as internal security actor, all member states have been required to generate similar integreated national risk assessments by 2014. At first sight, this could be welcomed as a departure from the ad hoc or crisis-driven policy-making dynamics that have long been criticized by critical commentators of EU internal security policy. In particular, the evolution of risk assessments relates to wider efforts to forge an evidence-based approach to internal security and to advance broader concepts of risk prevention and resilience as guiding principles for its future role in internal security. However, there is also a need for critical reflection on this growing trend and its implications for the EU. Frameworks for risk assessment need to be contrasted with the varied or lacking risk management practices on the ground and deeper contestations of seemingly technical methods of risk assessment, going beyond the question of legal implementation that dominates the ‘post-Stockholm’ debate. This article elucidates the functional and political limits for the implementation of standardized risk assessments, but also shows how the adoption of common guidelines still serves as a political tool for the legitimation of further policy initiatives in EU internal security.

KEYWORDS:

• European Union
• internal security
• civil protection
• security governance
• risk management

Notes

1 For a recent example see also the Index for Risk Management: http://www.inform-index.org/

2 This point has also been made extensively in the wider Europeanization literature.

3 Take, for instance, the so-called ‘policy cycle’ that seeks to define shared crime-fighting priorities https://www.europol.europa.eu/content/eu-policy-cycle-empact

4 Divergent institutionalization was accentuated with the recent adoption of a revised EU legal framework for operational civil protection coordination, which led to the creation of the so-called Emergency Response Coordination Centre that was also housed in DG ECHO. DG Home pursued alternative projects for a crisis room and integrated risk analysis, which has come to be known under the label STAR (compare Leite, 2015).

5 The fact that the Commission's most recent communication on an ‘European Agenda on Security’ (European Commission, 2015) no longer includes resilience and crisis management as distinct priorities might be read as a further sign that that these issues continue to evolve into a distinct policy space.

6 For a broader critical review see Bossong and Rhinard (2013).

7 These were: Bulgaria, Cyprus, Czech Republic, Denmark, Estonia, Germany, Greece, Hungary, Ireland, Italy, Lithuania, The Netherlands, Poland, Romania, Slovenia, Sweden and UK. Norway as a participating member of the civil protection mechanism also send in its assessment.

8 For a contrasting view that EU internal security cooperation remains comparatively de-politicized, see Herschinger et al. (2013).

9 For instance, in the rising field of cybersecurity and its potential connection with the vulnerability of modern infrastructures, EUROPOL now produces a new threat report (‘iOCTA’), while the more narrowly tasked European Network Information Agency (ENISA) already produced an annual ‘Electronic Threat Landscape’ (ELT).