Building the new Europe : soft security and organised crime in EU enlargement

Abstract

This thesis examines the policy and politics of the fight against organised crime in the process of the European Union’s enlargement to Eastern Europe and the Balkans. It covers the period between the end of the Cold War in 1989 and the second Eastern enlargement in 2007 which saw the emergence of a new normative base for international relations and the expansion of the international security agenda focusing on ‘soft security’ issues and threats from weak rather than powerful states. The thesis explores this new ‘soft security’ thinking and investigates its practical application in EU’s policy of building member-states in the New Europe with a focus on the case study of the fight against organised crime in Bulgaria and its EU-guided criminal justice reform. The thesis looks at these developments from both internal and external perspective and focuses on the practicalities of the policy itself such as the development of legislative changes, institutional reform and direct transfer of Western European expertise to Bulgarian institutions. The main findings of the thesis have led to a conclusion which questions the quality and premises of these policies. The thesis argues that the Bulgarian state and the European Union institutions have subscribed to a highly problematic organised crime discourse and agenda which has negatively influenced the quality of their relationship with the Bulgarian electorate.