Die Europäisierung der inneren Sicherheit

Due to persistently high levels of cross-border organised crime within the European Union, a mismatch can currently be observed between the European area of criminal activity and the European area of security. Member States face difficulties in adequately responding to the European dimension of internal security, not only for political but also for legal reasons. This is because the provision of internal security is closely linked to the state's monopoly on the legitimate use of force, which in turn constitutes a central element of state sovereignty. What has received little attention so far is that the state's monopoly on the legitimate use of force is not an entirely untouchable domain.
Jul Krüger defines a scope within which the state's monopoly on the legitimate use of force can be modified-and thus Europeanised-in accordance with the concept of shared sovereignty in a union of states and constitutional orders. The four-level model of the monopoly on the use of force developed to capture this scope enables not only a differentiated analysis of the Europeanisation of the state's monopoly on the legitimate use of force (i.e. the status quo), but also an assessment of the extent to which modifications are compatible with the constitutional limits on the transfer of powers under Article 23(1), third sentence, in conjunction with Article 79(3) of the German Basic Law (i.e. an extension of the status quo).
Transfers and exercises of competences that are currently under discussion can be incorporated into the model developed in the study. On an abstract level, this allows for an initial assessment of whether modifications of the civilian monopoly on the legitimate use of force are compatible with constitutional and European legal requirements. The author illustrates this approach through a range of case studies.