EU Responses to Terrorism

(Christopher Baker-Beall, Loughborough University)

One of the fundamental objects of the European Union (EU) is to provide its citizens with an area of freedom, security and justice. This involves a commitment to action in the areas of policing, judicial cooperation, migration, asylum and counter-terrorism. Indeed the political impetus for action in these areas was reinforced as a result of the terrorist attacks that occurred in America on September 11th 2001 and in Europe in March 2003 and July 2005. The terrorist attacks on Europe thus provide a challenge to the EU as an actor in the areas of both internal and external security. The aim of this paper is to analyse specifically the development and impact of EU policy responses to terrorism. It will be argued that responses to terrorism can have both an internal and external security dimension. The EU focuses primarily on terrorism as an internal security issue. Furthermore, much of what passes for terrorism research lacks rigorous theories and concepts, is based primarily on secondary information, lacks a historical context and is heavily biased towards Western and state-centric perspectives. For this reason the paper will emphasises the need for a 'critical turn' in how terrorism is understood, when considering EU responses to terrorism.