The UK-Canada Agreement on mutual support of missions abroad: loyalty compromised? CEPS Commentary, 18 October 2012

The UK and Canada recently signed a Memorandum of Understanding aimed at allowing the two countries to optimise their respective diplomatic resources by sharing embassy and consulate sites, the joint acquisition, supply and use of services, as well as collaboration on crisis response, consular services, security, diplomatic mail, information management and IT. This CEPS Commentary argues that the MoU on Mutual Support of Missions Abroad runs counter to the spirit of loyal cooperation, in particular in the realm of EU foreign policy. It also raises challenges to coherence, consistency and effectiveness of EU action in policy areas concerning visas, trade and consular protection. Moreover, the agreement may throw a spanner in the works of EU solidarity and the creation of a stronger EU identity, both internally and externally

The EU’s Paradoxical Efforts at Tracking the Financing of Terrorism: From criticism to imitation of dataveillance. CEPS Paper in Liberty and Security No. 56, August 2013

In July 2011, the European Commission published a Communication aimed at setting out different options for establishing a European terrorist finance tracking system (TFTS). The Communication followed the adoption of the EU-US agreement on the US Terrorist Finance Tracking Program (TFTP) in 2010. The agreement concluded various series of national, European and transatlantic negotiations after the disclosure through public media of the US TFTP in 2006. This paper takes stock of the wide range of controversies surrounding this security-focused programme with dataveillance capabilities. After stressing the impact of the US TFTP on international relations, the paper argues that the EU-US agreement primarily has the effect of shifting information-sharing practices from the justice/judicial/penal/criminal investigation framework into the security/intelligence/administrative/prevention context as the main rationale. The paper then questions the TFTP-related conception of mass intelligence through large-scale databases and transnational communication of bulk data in the name of targeted surveillance. Following an examination of the project creating an EU system equivalent to the TFTP, the paper emphasises the fundamental paradox of transatlantic security matters, in which European criticism of American programmes tends to be ultimately translated into EU imitation of US dataveillance practices.