Fortress Europe Reloaded? Towards an Integrated EU Security Governance Space

Recent developments in the areas of migration management and anti-terrorism in Europe have triggered a reflex of executive steering from the governmental cores and a tendency to increasingly devise policies directed at stronger transnational coordination in a number of key government areas, namely rule of law, defence, border protection as well as internal and external security. Arguably these measures are necessary to address the simultaneous endogenous and exogenous pressures amounting to an existential political and legitimacy crisis for the EU. Given the direct cross-border involvement of security authorities, this paper asks whether this trend, involving national and EU authorities bound together in the joint performance of core-state functions, entails the emergence of a “European security governance space”. To elucidate this question, the focus is on the intensified coordination between home affairs, border protection as well as law enforcement and diplomats at EU and member state level.s I study cases witnessing of a tendency towards reinforcing existing bureaucratic connections and operational links between entities in the fields of policing and judiciary, intelligence, defence and diplomacy at different governance levels, notably in form of intensified coordination, information exchange and in ways of more or less loosely coupled organizational sub-units. Preliminary evidence from official documents, first-hand insights and interview data suggests that coordination and cooperation are indeed on the rise. Such an evolution would point to a joined-up and increasingly integrated security governance space and supports the assumption that the EU crisis contributes to the transfer of core-state powers to the EU level.