Policy Change in the Area of Freedom, Security and Justice: How EU Institutions Matter

Abstract

The EU’s cooperation in the field of Justice and Home Affairs (JHA) concerns core functions of statehood, namely safeguarding internal security, controlling national frontiers and providing citizens with justice. Following a reluctant start, this policy field has been transformed from a loose form of intergovernmental cooperation to a priority of the EU’s political and legislative agenda. This policy shift has been accompanied by rapid and frequent institutional changes that have gradually empowered all EU institutions. The panel presents the book project “Policy change in the Area of Freedom, Security and Justice: How EU institutions matter”. The project seeks to analyse the impact of these institutional changes on policy-making from a comparative and theoretically informed perspective. The objective is to systematically investigate whether the progressive empowerment of the EU’s supranational institutions has led to policy change in the AFSJ and what the role of these institutions is in the development of the different JHA issue areas. The comparative analysis will define common indicators that measure the degree of policy change in this area and identify the institutional mechanisms facilitating or constraining policy change. On this occasion, we present the cases of counter-terrorism, citizenship, asylum, and border policies as salient examples of the different types of changes that have occurred in this area and the mechanisms linking institutional and policy change.

Title	Details
EU Borders Policy	View Paper Details
EU Wide Digital Security Measures: A Provocation Towards Popular Attitudes Between Security and Freedom	View Paper Details
Contiguity, Contagion and Evolution in EU Citizenship and Integration	View Paper Details
Organised Crime Policy in the European Union: An Institutional Perspective	View Paper Details