Integration Trends of EU Internal Security and Law Enforcement: How Legal, Technological and Operational Advancements Matter

Abstract Rising concerns about the spread of cross-border criminal networks and transnational terrorism have transformed the international security arena into a more diverse, fragmented, diffused, less visible and hardly predictable one. Thus, (in)security is more mobile and remote than some decades ago. The establishment of an integrated European security area requires efforts to develop common standards and joint practices in terms of harmonisation of legal systems, advanced integration of security measures and tools, coherence of procedures and shared operational methods of law enforcement. The article discusses the main integration trends, challenges and options of internal security reforms in the European Union (EU) from legal, technological and operational advancement perspectives. It is argued that some harmonisation of criminal law as sharing and pooling of sovereignty has been achieved on the supranational level. The approach of supra-territoriality development is proposed in terms of shared security space management, where enhanced functional needs towards discursive coherence by copulative regulations and technological measures can be innovated to overcome some obstacles in the EU’s security integration and achieve further operational success.