Cross-border crime control cooperation in the Euregion Meuse-Rhine: nuancing perception and practice

• In Event: POLWG Panel 27. Policing, politics and Human Rights in national and international contexts

Abstract

This paper critically analyses the development(s) in cross-border cooperation in policing and law enforcement in the Euregion Meuse-Rhine. It does so by questioning the dichotomy between the rhetorics and realities of cross-border cooperation. The paper revolves around the narratives on and practices of three particularly novel, innovative initiatives: The Dutch, Belgian, German Police Working Group (NeBeDeAgPol, 1969), The Bureau for Euregional (law enforcement) Cooperation (BES, 2003) and the Euregional Police Information and Communication Centre (EPICC, 2005). These institutions are set up in response to increased cross-border crime in the region and in addition to national, international, and EU rules, procedures and policies.

This creates a unique, multi-directional governance constellation in cross-border crime control. Cooperation in cross-border crime control in the EMR is admittedly complex due to multiple regulatory frameworks and policies, three different languages, and a variety of organisational cultures and politics. The analysis is based on a combination of (1) a review of literature and documents, and (2) a set of recent empirical findings (survey results, in depth interviews and semi-structured interviews) from an ongoing research project funded by the Netherlands Organization for Scientific Research, which investigates “the problems and prospects of interorganizational and cross-border cooperation in EUregional crime control”.

We understand the relation between the (institutional) structure(s) of cooperation and the narrated perceptions of these cooperation practices as fundamental to understanding the developments in cross-border cooperation. In this, we adhere to a critical realist approach in the sense that we consider cooperative Institutional arrangements like those in the EMR, to be social entities that can be transformed through emancipatory human agency. But that they, at the same time, constitute a social ‘reality’ which affects the transformative potential of agency.

Authors

• Math Noortmann, Maastricht University

• Juliette Koning, Maastricht University

• Adela Aliyeva, Maastricht University