Emergency Policy

Volume III

Allan McConnell, Timothy Legrand

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2017
• ISBN:
  9781351940665
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Law
• Subtopic: International Law
• Index: Law

This volume of leading scholarly articles addresses the international dynamics of emergency policy and practice. In a world of increasing technological, economic and political interdependency, it is no longer feasible for states to ignore the pervasive influence of globalisation. The crises wrought by industrial disasters, catastrophic weather events, pandemics, financial implosion and cyber intrusion now transcend and challenge national interests with increasing frequency. The case-studies collected here explore these global dimensions of crisis and the state through the lenses of planning and prevention, acute responses, recovery and reconstruction, and learning about crisis. This collection is essential reading for academics, policy officials and practitioners with an interest in emergency management, risk management and issues of national/global security. In original introductory and concluding chapters to the volume, Legrand and McConnell provide a critical perspective on the challenges that globalisation presents to policymakers under crisis conditions and signposts some of the emerging challenges to the state and international community.

Part I
Prevention and Planning in a Globalized World

[1]
Preparing for the World Risk Society: Towards a New Security Paradigm for the European Union

Arjen Boin^* and Magnus Ekengren^**

The world of crises and disasters is changing rapidly. We are witnessing new types of adversity. In addition, modern societies have become increasingly vulnerable to disruptions, new and old. This new world demands new types of responses, which nation states cannot produce alone. Nation states will have to cooperate to protect their citizens from these threats. This article investigates the role of the European Union in the development of new safety and security arrangements. It identifies conceptual building blocks for a new security paradigm and offers design principles that can facilitate a shared way of thinking and acting in the safety and security domain.

1. Introduction: the need for new safety and security arrangements

The world of crises and disasters is changing rapidly, perhaps faster and in more fundamental ways than we can understand (Posner, 2004; Quarantelli, Lagadec, & Boin, 2006; Perrow, 2007; Boin, 2009; Lagadec, 2009; Wachtendorf, 2009). Beck (2008) speaks of a ‘second modernity’ – a world characterized by ever-increasing interrelatedness and interdependence. It is a world in which ‘transnational corporations and nation-states both compete and collaborate, war has become almost unthinkable [and] both military power and diplomacy have lost their longstanding importance’ (Beck, 2008, p. 797). It is also a world that will bring new, transboundary risks and crises. The global financial crisis and the unfolding flu pandemic demonstrate the velocity, instability, and widespread impact of these modern crises.

National governments are discovering that they cannot deal with these crises and disasters alone. Traditional institutional arrangements – marked by intricate coordination arrangements that connect local disaster spots with central authority – do not suffice in the light of transboundary threats that can overwhelm national coping capacity. Nation states will have to collaborate to develop transboundary management capacity. Such a process has been taking place in Europe, where the member states of the European Union (EU) have begun to develop joint safety and security arrangements for this new world of crises and disasters.

In recent years, member states have worked through the EU to deepen collaboration on all types of security-related issues. The total EU regulatory output in the fields of civil protection, health security, and antiterrorism polices for the period 1992-2007 amounted to 4,126 items, which has led to an increasingly institutionalized ‘protection policy space’ in the Union (Boin, Ekengren, & Rhinard, 2008).¹ Cooperation in the military realm has increased considerably (Jones, 2007). The EU has formulated a new generation of multilateral responses to other transboundary threats as well, such as pandemics, terrorism, infrastructural breakdowns, health and environmental hazards, and, most recently, financial crises. Institutional and attitudinal adaptation in the member states may be hesitant, slow, non-binding, and fragmented, but the EU’s role has increased inch by inch in broad areas of security and safety.

This newly emerging security role may come as a surprise, as the EU has traditionally served the aim of economic integration between member states. The fall of the Berlin Wall and the Balkan wars demonstrated shortcomings in the security arrangements that had dominated post-World War II Europe (Cottey, 2007). Security was the exclusive domain of nation states, which could elect to cooperate in international organizations such as NATO and the WEU. The US, London, and Madrid terrorist attacks rendered the paradigm more or less obsolete. Its quick demise caused an identity crisis within Europe’s security community (Mclnnes, 1994; Kirchner & Sperling, 2008).

The EU has begun to fill this void, but it is far from ready to adequately deal with transboundary crises and disasters (Boin & Rhinard, 2008). In this article, we explore what the EU requires to meet the challenges posed by transboundary crises. More specifically, we debate whether there is fertile ground for a new European safety and security paradigm that can inform and inspire the construction of a safer, more secure Europe in the World Risk Society.

We begin by offering a brief overview of recent developments in the EU and specify three types of crisis responses that the EU may be expected to deliver. We then explore building blocks for a new security paradigm that could guide the strengthening of the EU’s transboundary crisis management capacity. We conclude by offering suggestions for a road map of necessary reforms that will help create a secure Europe.

2. The EU’s emergence as a security actor: a brief overview

The European Community – the EU’s predecessor -was created to further economic recovery from the ravages of World War II through integration of key industries in Europe. Although cooperation through EU institutions can be, and actually was, also seen as an instrument to enhance European security, the European Community never explicitly pursued security, crisis, or disaster management as a formal policy goal.

Consequently, the EU never set out to build supranational capacity for dealing with threats to safety and security. Member states dealt with man-made and natural disasters using their own national and local organizations. Major disasters might prompt a state to request assistance from friendly nations, but purely on a bilateral basis. For traditional security threats, nations invested in international organizations such as NATO and, to a lesser extent, the United Nations. For other security threats, such as public health disasters or toxic agents, nation states endowed the World Health Organization, International Atomic Energy Agency, and the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons. These international organizations were designed for Old’ (yet still relevant) threats; they were clearly not designed for Beck’s (2008) new world of crises and disasters.

This new world invites three types of reactions from the EU, based on the level at which the threat plays out and at which a response may be required.

The first type is assistance to an overwhelmed member state. When the capacities of a member state no longer suffice to deal with a crisis or a disaster (typically a major natural disaster such as an earthquake, flood, or forest fires), the EU may offer assistance. The EU began to move cautiously into the field of civil protection during the 1980s, when a series of Italian forest fires raised the prospect of resource sharing through supranational mechanisms. Europe’s subsequent encounter with major terror attacks and natural disasters gave rise to a ‘Solidarity Declaration’, in which member states pledge to jointly mobilize civilian and military means to protect the ‘civilian population’ in the face of an attack or a disaster (European Council, 2004).

The second type is the response to external threats and disasters. Following conflagrations in the Balkans, the member states launched several military and civilian initiatives – the EU’s ‘Petersburg Tasks’ (1992), ‘Headline Goals’ (1999), and the ‘Battle Groups’ concept (2004) ranking among the most prominent – to facilitate joint military missions to global hotspots.² One of the most spectacular developments in the evolution of a shared security agenda is the adoption of the European Security and Defence Policy (ESDP) in 1999.

The EU now routinely deploys civil protection experts, police authorities, judicial advisors, and civil administration officials to stabilize post-conflict or disaster situations abroad (Duke 2002).³ In recent years, the EU has assisted citizens hit by the Asian tsunami, offered support to US authorities during the Katrina hurricane, coordinated forest-fire fighting efforts in Southern Europe, and assisted flood-stricken towns in Central Europe and Algeria. To be sure, these were rather modest support actions, but they mark the arrival of the EU as an international disaster support actor.

The EU harbours defined ambitions to become a player in the international security arena. The European Defence Agency’s ‘Long-Term Vision 2025’ defines military priorities and objectives aimed at making Member States ‘converge towards a more common understanding of military needs in the 21st century’. Its Capability Development Plans show the progress in building joint military capacity. The aim is not, in the words of EU High Representative Javier Solana, ‘to replace national defence plans and programmes but to support national decision making’. Member States agreed in 2008 to strive towards EU targets in areas such as intelligence, computer networks operations, and increased availability of helicopters.

The third type is the response to transboundary threats. We speak of a transboundary crisis when the critical infrastructures or life-sustaining systems in multiple member states have come under threat of imminent breakdown (regardless of the cause) (Boin, 2009). The outbreak of ‘mad cow’ disease and the Mexican Flu pandemic, electricity blackouts in Austria and Germany, waves of illegal immigrants washing up on European shores, and the implosion of the international financial system – these were all threats that required a multinational response.

The EU now has a health strategy that enhances cooperation in the face of cross-border health threats and a rapid alert system for communicable diseases, which functions as a quasi-decision-making platform (Commission, 2007; cf. UK Health Protection Agency 2006). It has a Monitoring and Information Center (MIC), which is on-line seven days a week to scan for and report on emerging threats. It has even begun to build a protection programme for the EU’s critical infrastructures, which include transportation, energy, communication, and information networks (Fritzon, Ljungkvist, Boin, & Rhinard, 2007).

The EU has developed capacity in the domain of judicial and police cooperation as well. A long and slow policy history was accelerated considerably by the Madrid train bombings (2004) and the London transport attacks (2005). Member states agreed to a joint arrest warrant, common rules regarding jurisdiction and prosecution, and an anti-terror unit. In addition, the role of Europol and Eurojust was expanded (Monar, 2006; Edwards & Myer, 2008). In light of the traditional reluctance of nation states to grant any type of law enforcement authority to a supranational body, these modest developments mark revolutionary steps in the EU’s integration process.

The three ‘threat-response types’ identified here are different in nature. For instance, it would seem that types I and III would have a more direct impact on one or more member states than the type II threat. If this is true, we may expect member states to be less willing to cede crisis management authority to the Union with regard to types I and III. The risk of lost sovereignty and a failed response could cause immense legitimacy losses (imagine a nation that cannot protect its citizens). In contrast, the second (‘foreign’) crisis type allows the EU to choose in which global crisis it wants to intervene, a condition that increases success chances and, therefore, political feasibility.

2.1 A common outlook on future threats?

The growing European capacity to deal with crises and disasters has been rather spectacular, especially given the strong resistance efforts to further European integration routinely encountered in the member states. It has been accomplished, remarkably perhaps, without a shared vision on the nature of future threats and the role the EU should play.

The closest thing to a shared philosophy may be the European Security Strategy (ESS), adopted in 2003 (and revised in 2008), which describes a role for the EU in enhancing global security (Missiroli, 2008). It declares the EU’s commitment to combat a variety of security threats, including failed states, energy security, terrorism, global warming, and disasters. The ESS adopts a comprehensive view, explicitly linking internal and external threats, civilian and military capacities, and natural and man-made disasters. The ESS has not moved much beyond ‘paper status’, however, and its influence has been limited at best.

It is not surprising, then, that the EU’s ‘policy space’ dealing with crises and disasters displays a high degree of fragmentation (Boin, Ekengren, & Rhinard, 2006; Rhinard & Boin, 2009): there is a wide diversity in thinking and practice when it comes to perceiving core threats to European security and acting upon them. Although interconnections and coherence are emerging ...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Contents
• Acknowledgements
• Series Preface
• Introduction
• Part 1 Prevention and Planning in a Globalized World
• Part 2 Acute Responses and Influences beyond the Nation-State
• Part 3 Recovery and Reconstruction in the Shadow of Globalization
• Part 4 The Possibilities of Crisis Learning in a Globalized World
• Name Index