Challenges and Prospects for the EU’s Area of Freedom, Security and Justice: Recommendations to the European Commission for the Stockholm Programme. CEPS Working Document No. 313, 16 April 2009

The upcoming Swedish presidency of the EU will be in charge of adopting the next multi-annual programme on an Area of Freedom, Security and Justice (AFSJ), during its tenure in the second half of 2009. As the successor of the 2004 Hague Programme, it has already been informally baptised as the Stockholm Programme and will present the EU’s policy roadmap and legislative timetable over these policies for the next five years. It is therefore a critical time to reflect on the achievements and shortcomings affecting the role that the European Commission’s Directorate-General of Justice, Freedom and Security (DG JFS) has played during the last five years in light of the degree of policy convergence achieved so far. This Working Document aims at putting forward a set of policy recommendations for the DG JFS to take into consideration as it develops and consolidates its future policy strategies, while duly ensuring the legitimacy and credibility of the EU’s AFSJ within and outside Europe

Epistemic policy networks in the European Union’s CBRN risk mitigation policy

This paper offers insights into an innovative and currently flagship approach of the European Union (EU) to the mitigation of chemical, biological, radiological, and nuclear (CBRN) risks. Building on its long-time experience in the CBRN field, the EU has incorporated methods familiar to the students of international security governance: it is establishing regional networks of experts and expertise. CBRN Centers of Excellence, as they are officially called, aim to contribute to the security and safety culture in different parts of Africa, the Middle East, South East Asia, and South East Europe, in the broadly construed CBRN area. These regional networks represent a modern form of security cooperation, which can be conceptualized as an epistemic policy networks approach. It offers flexibility to the participating states, which have different incentives to get involved. At the same, however, the paper identifies potential limitations and challenges of epistemic policy networks in this form

Building a Common Policy on Labour Immigration: Towards a Comprehensive and Global Approach in the EU? CEPS Working Document, No. 256, 7 February 2007

This paper addresses the building of a common EU policy on labour immigration. It reviews the latest policy developments concerning the harmonisation of the rules for admission and residence of third-country workers in the EU. In November 2006, the European Commission published a Communication entitled “Global Approach to Migration one year on: Towards a Comprehensive European Migration Policy”, which reemphasises the need to develop a transnational policy on regular immigration facilitating the admission of certain categories of immigrant workers through “a needsbased approach” and especially taking into account the case of the “highly skilled”. By September 2007 the Commission intends to present two proposals for directives dealing respectively with the conditions for entry and residence of highly skilled workers and a common general framework of rights for all immigrants in legal employment. The main questions evoked by the EU’s ‘global and comprehensive’ approach and these two proposals are considered along with the essential weaknesses that current policy and legal trends in the national arena may pose to any eventual Europeanisation as a result of following their patterns too closely

The changing dynamics of security in an enlarged European Union. Challenge Paper No. 12, 24 October 2008

The relation between liberty and security has been highly contestable over the past 10 years in the EU integration process. With the expansion of the EU’s powers into domains falling within the scope of the Area of Freedom, Security and Justice, liberty and its relation to security has brought a new range of issues, struggles and debates. Acts of political violence labelled as ‘terrorism’ and human mobility at the European and international levels have justified the construction of these phenomena as threats to the security and safety of the nation state. They have legitimised the development of normative responses that go beyond traditional configurations and raise fundamental dilemmas for the security and liberty of the individual. This paper assesses the ways in which the notions and perceptions of security and insecurity in the EU have evolved as political values and legal/policy goals, and how they are being transformed. It aims at synthesising the results of the research conducted since 2004 by the Justice and Home Affairs Section of CEPS through the CHALLENGE project (Changing Landscape of European Liberty and Security). The research has been premised upon one basic, but determining question: To what extent has the evolution of the international context altered the dynamics of liberty and security in the EU

Reinforcing the Surveillance of EU Borders: The Future Development of FRONTEX and EUROSUR. CEPS Challenge Paper No. 11, 19 August 2008.

This paper assesses the implications of the European Commission Communications on the evaluation and future development of FRONTEX (European Agency for the Management of Operational Cooperation at the External Borders of the Member States of the European Union) and the establishment of EUROSUR (European border surveillance system). It emphasises that the evaluation of the activities conducted by the EU’s external borders agency over the period 2006–07 fails to address the impact of such undertakings on fundamental rights and freedoms, solely focusing on technical issues and overall efficiency. It argues, furthermore, that the prospects for the development of FRONTEX, including through the proposal for EUROSUR, do not sufficiently address this matter either, while envisaging a significant reinforcement of the modalities of surveillance aimed at the EU’s external borders. The paper discusses the proposals presented in the two Communications, showing how they raise issues from a legal, technical, budgetary and political (i.e. the political desirability of additional measures for surveillance at the EU borders) standpoint. It concludes with a set of recommendations regarding how the prospects included in the two Communications should be approached