Availability by Stealth? EU Information-sharing in Transatlantic Perspective

Abstract

Since 1999, the European Union (EU) has experienced a number of remarkable developments concerning its Area of Freedom, Security and Justice (AFSJ). These include several EU-level initiatives aimed at promoting information-sharing among law enforcement, security and border control agencies to facilitate the common fight against transnational crime and terrorism. In July 2010, the European Commission published the first-ever official inventory of information-sharing mechanisms in the AFSJ, outlining what has been implemented or planned, analysing the principles that affect policy development in this area and pointing the way forward (European Commission, 2010a). This chapter examines several of these EU-level initiatives on information-sharing, which will be considered as examples of ‘intelligence reform’. This conceptualisation allows the analysis of EU-based information-sharing to benefit from comparison of parallel cases of intelligence reform in the United States (US).