Transnational Repression in democracies and host state responses

Authoritarian transnational repression has become an increasingly recurrent phenomenon in these last years. While the current literature on transnational repression has examined strategies and conditions that explain the occurrence of authoritarian transnational repression practices, we still have inadequate understanding of how democracies respond to such forms of authoritarian influence. Drawing on semi-structured interviews with EU officials and secondary material, the paper examines EU policy responses to transnational repression phenomenon. The paper demonstrates that the EU’s responses to the issue of transnational repression, is not uniform. At the supranational level, the EU lacks coordination to implement policy responses to transnational repression. At the national level, as the paper argues, state responses to transnational repression depend on the level of threat perception and the extent to which transnational repression is securitized. The paper shows that individual state responses fall into three categories: strong, weak, and no response. The variation in state responses will be further conditioned by strategic interests and existing economic ties between the EU nation state and the authoritarian perpetrator state. The prioritization of economic, security interests, and the desire to avoid political conflict with strategic authoritarian partners, mean that host states would often turn ‘a blind eye’ on incidents related to transnational repression and prioritise material interests over normative dimensions. The paper concludes with an overall assessment of the EU to counter transnational repression phenomenon.