Introduction

Abstract

For a long time literature dealing with security issues in the context of European integration tended to focus only on traditional external and particularly military security issues. Yet during the 1990s internal security started to occupy an increasingly prominent place on the agenda of the European Union (EU). This book analyses the internal security challenges faced by the EU from cross-border organised crime and illegal immigration. It looks at the nature of these challenges and the way in which perceptions of threat have determined responses. The book analyses both the structures and the policies that have been, and continue to be, developed by the EU to counter these problems. It seeks to investigate the model of internal security governance that the EU is creating and the extent to which this will be the dominant regime for the continent.