Abstract
This chapter provides a critical overview of European Union (EU) responses to increased terrorist activity in Europe since 2015. We argue that since about 2004 counter-radicalization has become a fundamental dimension of the EU’s preventive counter-terrorism strategies. Our analysis reveals a few important trends in recent EU policy measures including the predominance of preventive strategies, the outsourcing of knowledge production, a focus on the crime–terror nexus, the increasingly prominent role of prisons, more openness to the private sector, and an almost exclusive emphasis on Islamist-inspired terrorism with a correspondent neglect of other types of terrorism. We contend that these trends are not exclusive to the EU and are part of broader tendencies in contemporary international security.
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Notes
- 1.
In this chapter we use the term Daesh to designate the group also known as Islamic State , Islamic State in Iraq and in the Levant (ISIL ) or Islamic State in Iraq and Syria (ISIS). Daesh corresponds to the acronym of al-Dawla al-Islamiya al-Iraq al-Sham (Arabic for Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant) and is the expression adopted by the EU.
- 2.
Prevent is the part of the UK government’s counter-terrorism strategy CONTEST. The aim of the Prevent strategy is to prevent people from becoming radicalized and eventually commit to violent extremism. This strategy addresses the issue through three different approaches. First, it considers the ideological underpinning of extremism and its perpetrators; second, it offers practical support; and third, it cooperates with different sectors in which radicalization is likely to happen. CONTEST contains four pillars similar to the EU’s counter-terrorism strategy of 2005, namely protect, prevent, pursue, and respond. As Bossong (2014: 69) points out, this reflects the UK ’s influence on EU policy discussions on counter-terrorism during its presidency, with the result that the United Kingdom managed to ‘upload [its] strategy to the EU level’. Bossong describes another incident of the United Kingdom, together with the Netherlands, shaping EU measures in the discussions of the ‘Policy Planners Network’ which ‘clearly run in parallel to the EU’s efforts’. (idem, 71).
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Martins, B.O., Ziegler, M. (2018). Counter-Radicalization as Counter-Terrorism: The European Union Case. In: Steiner, K., Önnerfors, A. (eds) Expressions of Radicalization. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-65566-6_12
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