Abstract:
This thesis explores the challenges posed to democratic legitimacy by current practices of EU
counter-terrorism policing. It is concerned with the increasing amount of international cooperation
between police and, to a lesser extent, intelligence actors in this field and analyses
how far traditional mechanisms of accountability and oversight are keeping up with this
development. For this purpose, the thesis develops a model of democratic legitimacy for the
field of international counter-terrorism co-operation. The EU – like its Member States –
understands itself to be based on principles of representative liberal democracy and the
model follows roughly this idea by identifying parliamentary and judicial scrutiny as key
instruments to ensure ‘democratic’ counter-terrorism actions and the protection of human
rights.
Drawing on the literature on security networks, it is proposed that current forms of counterterrorism
policing under the EU’s umbrella should be understood as networks which are
defined as sets of expert institutional nodes or individual agents from at least two countries that are
interconnected in order to authorize and/or provide security with regard to counter-terrorism for the benefit of
the network participants or external ‘clients’. The empirical focus of this thesis is on the European
Police Office (Europol) which provides a key example in which to explore the emergence
and current status quo of EU counter-terrorism policing. In addition, debates about the EUUS
exchange of Passenger Name Record (PNR) data, the so-called Prüm arrangements
concerning intensified counter-terrorism co-operation in the EU, the freezing of terrorist
funds as well as European involvement in the CIA’s so-called extraordinary rendition
campaign are interwoven into this discussion. The thesis concludes that the EU is an
emerging counter-terrorism actor, but that – for the time being – its policies and actions are
insufficiently subject to parliamentary and judicial scrutiny. Challenges arise, in particular,
from the international nature of counter-terrorism networks, their loose structure, the variety
of actors involved and the strengthened co-operation between police and intelligence
authorities.
