Liberty and Security in the European Union: Foreword'

Juliet Lodge
2009 Journal of Contemporary European Research   unpublished
WHY DO LIBERTY AND SECURITY MATTER? WHY HAVE THEY BEEN SEEN AS POLAR opposites? And why is the tension in reconciling individual and collective liberty with collective security so problematic? Without security, liberty is impossible. Without liberty, as we understand it in the European Union (EU), democracy is jeopardised. There are many facets to understanding how the domesticisation of security and the securitisation of policy arenas, previously seen as domestic politics, challenge our
more » ... anding of the meaning of liberty, democracy, fundamental human rights and open governance. The EU has increasingly taken initiatives in the area of freedom, security and justice that expand the reach of cross-border cooperation by law enforcement agencies in ways that compromise the ability of the elected representatives of the people-national parliaments and the European Parliament-to hold national governments accountable for their decisions. Soft law and bilateral agreements side-step traditional institutions, sometimes inevitably determined by compelling operational imperatives. Governments typically justify these in the name of security-both private and collective. Simultaneously, governments deploy new technologies of surveillance and automated information exchange in seemingly unthinking ways, again in the name of enhancing individual and collective security. Paradoxically, this has not led to a boost in citizens' trust in government and its ability to maintain core values and minimise threats and insecurity. Instead, there is suspicion and cynicism. This arises from the logic of the multipurpose use of the technologies and the way in which they can be mined without the citizen knowing or being required to give consent. It arises also because many different strands of policymaking have become mired in a discourse of securitisation where new 'security' measures such as biometric radio-frequency identification (RFID) smart cards have been adopted by governments in ways that raise the spectre of centralised data bases of everyone's fingerprints. In many states, fingerprinting is associated with criminal activity rather than with the verification of the authenticity of the identity of the person providing that fingerprint. In the context of the EU's emerging migration and asylum policies, fingerprinting is clearly associated with a discourse of 'them' and 'us'. This in turn underscores concepts of risk, insecurities, trusted insiders and not-trusted outsiders. In brief, over the past five years, deliberation on liberty and security reveals that these concepts need to be disaggregated to be better appreciated and in order to better understand how and what appropriate measures might be implemented in the name of security for liberty.
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