Dr. Mehmet Ozcan printable version send your friend

New security problems are delivered to the EU’s agenda in parallel with its enlargement to new borders and geographies. The EU has faced levels of crime so high that it never witnessed before. Especially, factors like corruption and arbitrariness in the Central and Eastern European countries and related problems about the separation of powers, which is one of the main features of a democracy, has left EU facing with enlarging crime-networks in its enlarged borders.

Although unification has not been achieved for the last 500 years, the EU does not intend to miss the last opportunity of unifying Europe after the collapse of the Eastern Bloc. As such, as opposed to the crisis in the Central and Eastern European countries during their accession partnership, unifying those countries with Western Europe was one of the most important projects of the EU. Accordingly, those countries entered in a reconstruction period with support from the EU. Again, those countries have demonstrated significant development in their harmonization with Western democracies by the direct contribution and assistance of EU institutions. After their fulfillment of the Copenhagen Criteria, their harmonization process continued and they became EU members in May 2004.

The key factor for those countries becoming EU members in such a short period of time, as opposed to their deficiencies in some areas, was the EU’s economic and political assistance. Most importantly, their decisive approach to the EU and the vision provided by the EU during the integration period led them to enter into process of reconstruction. However, it is undeniable that as opposed to the positive features, those countries brought security problems into the EU with their membership. The 1990s witnessed a slight increase in human trafficking and the smuggling of automobiles, nuclear materials, drugs, and arms. Every sort of smuggled item has been poured into the EU from the ex-Eastern bloc countries and the new members’ neighbors.

The basic sine qua non principle of the Treaty of the European Union, free movement of persons, has allowed mobility not only to the ordinary citizens but also to organized crime networks. Those crime groups helped approximately 500.000 people to enter EU territory illegally and also supplied every kind of drug to the EU. The tragic development of crime in the EU, where borders were removed and crime became more cross-border, has rendered the need for cooperation among the member states in combating criminals unavoidable. This necessity was reflected as cooperation in Justice and Home Affairs in the Maastricht Treaty, otherwise known as the third pillar in EU terminology. However, the third pillar was dealt at the EU level instead of the community level, therefore, an inter-governmental structure rather than a supranational one was born. Accordingly, during the time until the signing of the Amsterdam Treaty in 1997, active cooperation in this field could not be achieved. A new concept came along with the Amsterdam Treaty: “area of freedom, security and justice.”  In order to substantiate this concept, several important decisions were taken at the Tampere Summit and subsequent ones, and as such, especially the seeds of an institutional structure started to be sown regarding justice and freedom area.