EU: The "enemy within" - plans to criminalise protests in Europe
01 May 2001
This special report looks at the plans EU governments have put in place to counter protests and draws conclusions on their effect on the right of free movement and the right to protest
In the aftermath of confrontations, arrests and the shooting of protestors at the Gothenburg EU Summit (14-16 June) a special meeting was held in Stockholm of 25 EU prosecutors on 18-20 June. The meeting heard from Swedish prosecutors that 50 people were being held in custody (at 3 July) and the names and details of 400 others had been recorded for future use. This was confirmed by a local police chief in Gothenburg who said the names had been put on the Schengen Information System (SIS) [1].
The prosecutors put forward a number of ideas. It was suggested that the names of "potential hooligans" exchanged for Euro 2000 should be compared with the list gathered in Gothenburg - though the link between travelling football fans and protestors is not spelt out, nor is it apparent. More concretely they point to the problem of making arrests on the streets because there were not enough police available to "investigate and begin to gather evidence" - this long-standing feature of public order policing was evident in Gothenburg and Genoa. There were very few arrests but many protestors were physically assaulted (what some call a form of "arbitrary punishment" for being part of a protest) - public order/para-military police units are, in the main, not trained to arrest and remove people but to clear the streets.
The meeting raised the idea that Europol should be given competence in the future to gather intelligence from national units and prepare analysis files on "suspected" groups (see below). The conclusions of the prosecutors meeting contains the following classic statement:
It was thought that criminal organisations are behind these events in most cases as they are so well organised
This meeting of EU prosecutors in Stockholm was followed by a special meeting of public order "experts" at the Police Cooperation Working Party in Brussels on 4 July. This was quickly followed by a series of meetings where the draft Conclusions were discussed by the "Justice and Home Affairs Counsellors" (specialist permanent officials based at the national delegations in Brussels) and twice by COREPER (the high-level committee of permanent representations of the 15 EU governments based in Brussels). The Conclusions were adopted at a specially convened meeting of the Justice and Home Affairs Council on 13 July.
EU Justice and Home Affairs Council adopt new measures to counter protests
The measures adopted by the Ministers at the Justice and Home Affairs Council were "Conclusions" which are considered to be "soft law" and not binding but all EU member states are expected to abide by them. National parliaments and the European Parliament were not consulted.
The first EU measures put in place were the Joint Action of 27 May 1997 on cooperation on law and order and security (covering public order in general including football matches and protests)[2]. This set up the exchange of information and intelligence and EU member states were to inform each other if:
sizeable groups which may pose a threat to law and order and security are travelling to another member state
The other legal power explicitly referred to is Article 46 of the Schengen Convention which covers the prevention of "offences against or threats to public order and security."
The following analysis looks at each of the measures agreed and their possible effect on the right to protest and the right to free movement.
The new plans are explicitly meant to put in place "operational measures". This is a major departure from existing powers which only cover the exchange between EU member states of information, intelligence and liaison officers.
The group charged with overseeing "the practical implementation" of the plans (ie: everything from the gathering of intelligence to the policing of p