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Building resilience, demolishing accountability? The role of Europol in counter-terrorism

ABSTRACT In Europe, as in most countries of the world, building resilience to terrorism is a key concern at the moment. One way of building resilience out of many, is to normalise and depoliticise counterterrorist measures by giving powers over them to seemingly non-political and technical actors, the police. These attempts to build resilience to terrorism by normalising counterterrorist procedures may lead to losing political powers to bureaucracies and even third states. The role of Europol in countering terrorism serves as an example to demonstrate this development. Since the police, including Europol, is seen as a technical, non-political actor, its role in countering terrorism can be seen to facilitate and normalise anti-terrorist procedures. Simultaneously, however, Europol lacks accountability and democratic oversight and collaborates with organisations that are less accountable than itself such as intelligence services. What happens to data shared with the Counter Terrorism Group or Interpol? The article points to an alarming development that requires further scholarly attention.