Contemporary Challenges of Transnational Security Cooperation in a Franco-German Perspective

Over the past thirty years, cooperation with foreign police forces not directly bound by national police law has become more frequent and diverse in EU member states. In addition to more traditional forms of co-operation, such as the exchange of information in the context of mutual legal assistance requests, there are now temporary deployments of police officers to other countries for operational measures and permanent bilateral joint task forces between individual member states. This operational shift reveals important regulatory deficits, prompting a legal dilemma regarding application of respective constitutional and police legal frameworks in the countries where foreign police officers are deployed.
In response, by undertaking a French-German comparison, this project aims to identify and investigate emergent problems arising from contemporary forms of transnational security cooperation, and to suggest a more coherent legal framework for resolving them. Employing an innovative blend of comparative law, empirical, and doctrinal methods, the project proceeds by first surveying current transnational security cooperation in France and Germany using field studies of the 2024 European football championship in Germany, and the 2024 Olympic Games in France. It then seeks answers to constitutional and doctrinal questions arising from such transnational security cooperation, specifically, what established constitutional principles can be identified in view of mounting transnational security cooperation, and how the involvement of and liability for foreign police forces is currently organised—and might be optimally restructured—in Germany and France.
While aiming to enhance contemporary doctrinal frameworks and solutions, the project’s main focus on the growing internationalisation of security cooperation efforts, and the emergence of further regulatory gaps and tensions, resonates chiefly with the second axis of the Department’s tripartite research agenda.