The mobility rights of unusual “cross-border workers”: police

by Monika Weissensteiner

The following Blog has been developed by one of the participant of the recent MCAA ECS Satellite event on Science Communication.
During the workshop, participants were invited to work on a scientific blog and submit their final piece to be published on the MCAA Blog.

The piece has been revised by a task-force of the MCAA Communication Working Group. Members of the team included: Maria Montefinese, Luisa Merz, Ashish Avasthi, Pradeep Eranti, Nicoleta Spînu, and Ruben Riosa.

Enjoy the piece!

In January 2023, the story of a robbed money transport and the suspects’ escape from Germany into France, with police abandoning their pursuit across the border, was hitting the news. Some years earlier, on another Schengen border, the story plot differs: police officers pursued a stolen vehicle into neighbouring Italy, a border area that, according to the local news, has seen similar events before. Where are we today when it comes to the cross-border mobility of a quite special vocational category, namely, the police? The formal exercise of police power is traditionally limited by jurisdiction and within the state border. However, EU and bilateral cooperation instruments enable activities such as cross-border hot-pursuit, cross-border surveillance, information exchange, and even joint operations and patrolling. While the issue has its legal and political complexities, it is tangible in the everyday life of Schengen-border regions.

The illustrated story and characters are fictitious, the theme is certainly not. Since 2016, the calls on EU level grew louder to strengthen police cooperation, specifically also across border regions (the color overlap territories in the image). In 2022 the Council of the European Union, on the proposal of the EU Commission (2021), issued a Recommendation on operational law enforcement cooperation. It is derived from the Commission’s legislative initiative of an “EU Police Cooperation Code” aiming to enhance cross-border policing.

The Research Project LEmobAB — Law Enforcement mobilities Across Borders — combines an analysis of legal and policy developments and a qualitative empirical study of law enforcement cooperation across three cross-border regions. It aims to study the relation between EU-level developments and local-level experiences. Fostering on a theoretical level the interface between international relations, global criminology, and legal anthropology, it interrogates the way that policing contributes to shaping the European space. The project also foresees the mapping of current bilateral agreements with a particular focus on provisions such as cross-border hot pursuit and surveillance, or joint operations: a map that will be able to be consulted online on the project’s website. Visualization activities are a key element in analysis and communication.

Mark, Marie and Bill, or Sue and Samira, could potentially be interested in checking out the website, or also getting in touch since their views and experiences matter.

Thanks go to the MCAA for organizing a training day on research blogging, in which this first blog “writing” experiment took shape.

About the author
Monika Weissensteiner is a Marie Skłodowska-Curie postdoctoral fellow at the School of International Studies of Trento University, Italy. Her research project LEmobAB received funding through HORIZON 2021 European MSCA fellowship, GA. No 101063837. The project collaboration with the Züricher Hochschule der Künste will support one of the project’s objectives, namely to foster visualization practices and skills in research and communication. Monika holds a PhD in Cultural and Global Criminology and prior degrees in Social Anthropology.