The external dimension of the EU's fight against transnational crime: Transferring political rationalities of crime control

Abstract

The article constitutes the first comprehensive review of the EU's export of crime control policies and ‘aid to internal security’ across regions over the last 15 years. Drawing on both International Relations and criminology, it develops an analytical framework to identify the political rationalities and technologies of crime control that the EU attempts to transfer across the Eastern and Southern (extended) neighbourhoods. By scrutinising 216 projects aimed at combating transnational crime beyond Europe's borders, spanning law enforcement, border security, criminal justice, and the penitentiary sector, the empirical analysis is geared towards detecting and systematising the ways of thinking and doing crime control that the EU seeks to promote and export. Moreover, it investigates the ‘action at a distance’ whereby it does so. It is argued that in shaping third countries’ ability to criminalise, police, indict, convict, and punish, the EU is simultaneously defining its own security actorness, specifically consolidating its role as a ‘global crime fighter’.