THE FIGHT AGAINST TERRORISM IN EUROPE: EU INSTRUMENTS OF COOPERATION IN CRIMINAL MATTERS

Terrorism undoubtedly represents one of the greatest challenges in the European Union, intimidating the values and the democratic principles upon which the Union itself was originally founded. It threatens the process of European Integration which dates back to the Maastricht Treaty of 1992 up to the Lisbon treaty of 2009. The peculiarity of the phenomenon, characterized by fluid and decentralized structures capable of operating beyond borders, have compelled Member States to abandon the concept of absolute sovereignty and to adopt a mutual collaboration. This thesis aims to show how cooperation on criminal matters has become a precious opportunity to counter terrorism in the European Union. With regards to the methodological approach and the contents of the work, the research starts from the analysis of the birth and evolution of the forms of judicial cooperation within the European dimension and then moves towards a detailed examination of the normative initiatives, and of the tools of mutual assistance on judicial and police cooperation. Subsequently, the work analyzes the institutions which have made possible the development of the Union as an effective global space of justice. Among these, the European Union’s Law Enforcement Agency EUROPOL and the European Union Agency for Criminal Justice Cooperation EUROJUST assume a crucial role in the evolving context of judicial cooperation since, by offering the possibility of directly requesting the intervention of competent authorities located on the site, they guarantee the necessary timeliness for a fruitful evidence collection. In this sense, the study examines the exchange of information which is, by far, one of the most pivotal means in the fight against terrorism. The focus will be mainly on the Framework Decision 2006/960/JHA, which established a simplified system for the exchange of information and intelligence between the security services of the Member States of the European Union, the Treaty of Prüm introducing, for the first time, the exchange of biometric data, and last but not least, the Directive (EU) 2016/681 of 27 April 2016 on the use of passenger name record (PNR) data for the prevention, detection, investigation and prosecution of terrorist offenses. Finally, chapter V will illustrate how cooperation has transcended European borders with an insight of how the fight against terrorism consolidated between the Union and powerful countries such as the United States of America, China and Russia.