The network-based EU JHA agenda: legal and judicial networks in fighting transnational organized crime

Since the end of '90s, transnational organized crime has risen up in the EU JHA agenda and an impressive elaboration of institutional responses to global challenges has been realized. In particular, in the aftermath of 9/11th, the awareness of externalities that could put at risk the development of the AFSJ strongly emerged and, in behalf of a new securitation ethos, the creation of networks of judges, prosecutors and high-ranking ministry officials working on security issues was increasingly encouraged. These arrangements, established under EU secondary legislation or international agreements, are able to give a networked response to an increasing number of networked threats, through the exchange of data and information as well as coordination of activities aimed to combat new forms of transnational crime. EU has promoted the emergence of this flexible mode of cooperation as a means to improve the effective application of judicial cooperation mechanisms, since it can combine soft power instruments, as persuasion and the sharing of information, with hard power instruments, as the action carried out by national authorities to enforce law. Nowadays, networks are used to a very great extent to perform cooperation in security matter, since they represent a suitable method to favor the application of the principle of availability. As an example, this approach has been extensively adopted in the Internal Security Strategy in Action, issued in 2010, which has foreseen the setting up of a number of network-based arrangements to handle a wide range of issues. In the framework of a broader research project on the role of legal and judicial networks in building the new EU Area of Justice, this paper will examine the development of network-model within EU JHA and will review the existing EU networks operating specifically in fighting transnational organized crime. This will include taking a closer look at the range of initiatives in the areas of mutual assistance and crime prosecution both inside and outside EU.