Police Cooperation within the Benelux: A Pioneering Role in Relation to the European Union?

This chapter is dedicated to police cooperation between the Member States of the Benelux Union compared with that performed within the European Union. In the context of the questions raised in the Introduction of the volume, it will be seen in what ways and to what extent police cooperation helps a deeper inte-gration in the Benelux, and how this grouping works for a closer coordination of the same competence developed by the European Union. The dangers arising from transnational crime are addressed with increasing concern in the present time, when the idea of a more extensive and integrated cross-border cooperation among national police authorities has taken on grow-ing significance. Particularly in Europe, police cooperation had to deal with the new and alarming threats to internal security emerged in the second half of the Twentieth century. An ever more intense cooperation was deemed by European Governments to be necessary for three reasons: the per-centage increase in serious crimes, which have gradually acquired a transna-tional character; the positive results that the joint fight against crime can give for professional growth and learning; the integration process in the European Communities and in the European Union. The involvements of the European integration process on Member States are well known. The gradual establishment of a single market, with a space without borders where the “four freedoms” of movement (goods, persons, services and capitals) are guaranteed, has had a significant impact on the European dimen-sion of police cooperation. The single market has played a key role in ensuring that police cooperation in Europe made a qualitative leap. Indeed, it can be said that this cooperation has been mainly designed as a compensatory tool for the expansion of the free movement of persons. The awareness of a pressing and dangerous delinquency has led to the establishment of the mechanisms referred to in the Third Pillar by the Maastricht Treaty. These mechanisms were then reformed by the Amsterdam Treaty, maintained by the Nice Treaty and strengthened by the Lisbon Treaty. Article 3, para. 2, of the Treaty on the European Union (TEU), in the version deriving from the Lisbon Treaty, states that “The Union shall offer its citizens an area of freedom, security and justice without internal frontiers, in which the free movement of persons is ensured in conjunction with appropriate measures with respect to external border controls, asylum, immigration and the prevention and combating of crime.”. Bearing in mind its specific purpose, the intensification of a cooperation between police authorities of the Member States is strongly desired. Likewise significant was the path taken outside the Community and the Euro-pean Union for the establishment of forms of intergovernmental cooperation to be achieved through the creation of an area without internal borders where the free movement of persons could be ensured. In addition to the Schengen Agreements, a relevant example is the Benelux. As a forerunner of the Commu-nities and the European Union in promoting the four freedoms (particularly, the free movement of persons), the Benelux Union has traced a path which influ-enced the European Union’s consideration to the issues of justice and home af-fairs. In this regard, the Benelux Countries have drafted some solutions partly implemented and partly not yet consolidated by the Euro-pean Union itself.