Area of freedom, security and justice
The area of freedom, security and justice is a political concept of the European Union that goes back to the cooperation in the area of justice and home affairs and from the areas of judicial cooperation in civil matters , judicial cooperation in criminal matters , police cooperation and policy in the area of border control, Asylum and immigration exist.
history
In the course of progressive integration, it became clear that the internal market and freedom of movement in particular can pose a threat to the member states and their citizens. Particular mention should be made of cross-border crime , uncontrolled migration , but also the problem of deliberately playing off individual national legal systems against one another.
In response to this, with the Maastricht Treaty in 1992 , the member states expanded their political cooperation to include the policy fields of justice and home affairs. These formed the so-called third pillar of the EU . This was strongly intergovernmental : decisions could only be made unanimously by all member states in the Council of the EU , the European Parliament had no say. In detail, this 3rd pillar comprised the following areas:
- police and judicial cooperation in criminal matters (PJZS),
- judicial cooperation in civil matters (JZZ) and
- accompanying measures for the free movement of persons in the EU for nationals of third countries, ie the harmonization of asylum, refugee, visa and immigration policy.
With the Amsterdam Treaty of 1997, all these measures are grouped under the heading of the area of freedom, security and justice , and this concept has been expressly promoted to the rank of an objective of the Union. At the same time, with the Treaty of Amsterdam, the JZZ and the accompanying measures for the free movement of persons were transferred from the intergovernmental 3rd pillar of the EU to the supranational 1st pillar (" communitized "), so that now in the co-decision procedure (with a majority decision in the Council and a say for the European Parliament ). The Lisbon Treaty , which came into force on December 1, 2009, now provides for the PJZS to be communitized within the policy areas of judicial cooperation in criminal matters and police cooperation . The earlier “3. Pillar "is dissolved and decisions on home affairs and justice policy in the EU are now generally made in accordance with the ordinary legislative procedure , which corresponds to the co-decision procedure. At the same time, the "accompanying measures for the free movement of persons" were renamed to policy in the field of border controls, asylum and immigration .
Great Britain , Ireland and Denmark have very limited contributions to justice and home affairs policies due to additional protocols.
See also
- Justice and Home Affairs Council
- Hague program
- Stockholm program
- Internal security , public security
literature
- Christoph Gusy, Christoph S. Schewe: The legal and asylum policy of the European Union , in: Werner Weidenfeld (Hrsg.), Europa-Handbuch , 2nd edition Bonn 2004, ISBN 3-89204-630-1 , p. 342 ff.
- Peter-Christian Müller-Graff, Friedemann Kainer: Asylum, Immigration and Visa Policy ; in: Werner Weidenfeld, Wolfgang Wessels (Eds.), Europa von A bis Z , Berlin 2006, ISBN 3-8329-1378-5 , p. 332ff.
- European Commission : Communication from the Commission to the European Parliament and the Council - An area of freedom, security and justice serving the citizens . COM / 2009/0262 final, 10 June 2009. (PDF, HTML and DOC; multilingual)
- High level advisory group on the future of European judicial policy: Suggested solutions for the future EU program in the field of justice . June 2008 (PDF file; 400 kB)
- Council of the European Union: Draft text for a European pact on immigration and asylum . September 24, 2008 (PDF file; 156 kB)