Towards a european FBI?

1. An asymmetry between economy and security

The European Union has progressively integrated its economies, abolished internal borders, created a common currency, and developed an area of free movement without historical equivalent. It has been able to build a market, a legal system, a diplomacy, and even the beginnings of a common defense. But while the Union perfects its economic and normative architecture, another phenomenon is progressing in the shadows: the structuring of deeply transnational organized crime.

Drug trafficking now permeates the entire continent. North Sea ports have become global hubs. Money laundering networks exploit tax and legal differences between Member States. Criminal networks use digital technologies to coordinate their activities on a European scale. Where States still merely cooperate, mafias are already operating as an integrated system. This asymmetry is at the heart of the problem and weakens the foundations of the Union.

The EU is an area without internal borders; security remains compartmentalized. Goods circulate freely, as does capital, but police and judicial competencies remain fragmented. Europe has integrated its market faster than it has integrated its regional internal security.

2. The role and limits of Europol

In Europe, the Europol agency is responsible for linking different governments (European Union Agency for Law Enforcement Cooperation) and supporting police cooperation between Member States. It was officially created in 1998 (following the 1995 Europol Convention) and became a fully-fledged European agency in 2010. Its headquarters are located in The Hague, Netherlands. Its main missions are to fight serious forms of international crime and terrorism, notably organized crime, drug trafficking, cybercrime, and human trafficking. Europol has no independent power of arrest: it acts in support of national authorities by facilitating information exchange, criminal analysis, and the coordination of joint operations. Its current legal foundation rests on Regulation (EU) 2016/794 of the European Parliament and of the Council, which frames its competencies and functioning.

Admittedly, progress has been made. Europol now coordinates national services and the European Public Prosecutor's Office is beginning to exercise limited supranational competence. But these instruments still rely on a logic of intergovernmental cooperation, and not on true federal sovereign power.

Consequently, a decisive question arises: can a political union claim power without having a generalized capacity to guarantee the internal security of all its citizens? In other words: faced with globalized and technologically advanced mafias, should the European Union take a historic step and equip itself with a real "European FBI"?

The answer to this question is not solely a matter of police efficiency. It engages the very definition of European sovereignty and the degree of political integration that Member States are ready to assume.

3. Integrated mafias facing a fragmented Europe

3.1. The post-national mutation of crime

Contemporary organized crime is no longer reduced to localized games played in secret. As described by criminologists working on the globalization of crime, it has transformed into a post-national phenomenon, structured in interconnected transnational networks: it thinks in terms of flows, interdependencies, and multiple territorial opportunities.

In the European context, the trafficking of cocaine, weapons, or human beings have become integrated continental markets, often articulated around hubs like the ports of Antwerp or Rotterdam. Here again, research shows that these organizations behave neither like simple local criminal groups nor like cartels: they are organized in adaptive networks where cooperation and strategic flexibility are essential to their survival. The literature on policing and transnational crime points in the same direction. Authors like James Sheptycki, a sociologist specializing in the phenomenon, have shown that globalization renders purely national approaches to policing obsolete, and that the sociology of crime must integrate the transnational dimension of control and surveillance policies.

Europol's report corroborates this: organized crime is no longer limited to sectoral illicit markets, but is structured as a parallel economy fully articulated with the legal economy, through money laundering and the infiltration of businesses. As the latest Serious and Organised Crime Threat Assessment (SOCTA) explains: 86% of identified criminal networks operate via legal commercial structures.

This transformation of the criminal model is not a mere passing trend, as it is part of a broader movement of globalization of human activities, to which crime is no exception. As illustrated by the book The Rise of EU Police Cooperation, growing interdependencies between States have given rise to logics of police cooperation on a European scale, but these logics remain insufficient against actors who recognize neither borders nor exclusive national authorities.

3. 2. The limits of institutional fragmentation

However, this observation poses a major institutional problem. Literature on European integration shows that the EU has developed mechanisms for information exchange, regulatory harmonization, and judicial cooperation, but without creating a federal investigative authority or a transnational prosecutor's office endowed with autonomous power of intervention. Thus, despite the existence of instruments like the European Arrest Warrant or the EPPO (European Public Prosecutor’s Office), European police coordination still largely depends on the voluntary convergence of national policies.

This institutional fragmentation is all the more glaring as transnational crime does not wait for the end of intergovernmental negotiations. It exploits legislative divergences, differences in political priorities, and procedural delays between Member States. It therefore profits from the interstices of sovereignty to prosper, contrary to Europe's slow and cautious institutional integration regarding internal security.

Consequently, the main challenge posed by criminals is not simply the lack of cooperation: it is the absence of a supranational police authority endowed with real sovereign power. Would the prospect of a European FBI capable of matching the scale of contemporary threats be the best option?

4. The illusion of cooperation: why Europol is not a sovereign power

4.1. Cooperation vs Sovereignty: the lesson of Max Weber

The comparison between Europol and the FBI brings to light a fundamental difference of an institutional nature: the distinction between cooperation and sovereignty.

In this regard, the FBI embodies a fully realized federal logic. It can open an investigation on its own initiative, deploy armed agents, make arrests, and act under the authority of a coherent federal judicial system. Its action does not depend on the goodwill of the federated states, but stems from a direct and federal constitutional competence.

4.2. The paradox of a police without a State

Europol, on the other hand, operates according to a different logic. The agency is entrusted with the following missions:

• Coordinate national services;
• Centralize and analyze data;
• Facilitate joint investigation teams;
• Produce strategic assessments.

But it can neither coerce, nor arrest, nor initiate autonomous proceedings. It remains dependent on national authorities for any operational action. We are here at the heart of what political scientists call multi-level governance without a sovereign center. The European Union has shared competencies, coordination mechanisms, and sophisticated legal tools — but it does not possess an integrated coercive apparatus.

Sociologist James Sheptycki, a specialist in transnational policing dynamics, speaks of a phenomenon of policing without a state: a police force that cooperates across borders, without the existence of a true structuring transnational sovereignty. This situation produces a paradox: Europe has created an integrated area of movement, but its capacity for intervention remains territorialized. This is, moreover, what the EU has been criticized for over decades in several areas of activity, which are never coercive.

4.3. Incomplete functional integration

Nevertheless, notable progress has been made. The European Public Prosecutor's Office constitutes a major advancement: for the first time, a supranational authority can initiate criminal prosecutions independently of national governments. But its scope of competence remains limited (fraud against the financial interests of the Union). It is not a general criminal prosecutor's office capable of dealing with drug trafficking, organized crime, or terrorism. This situation illustrates what some European integration researchers describe as incomplete functional integration: the Union advances by sectors, through technical adjustments, without crossing the constitutional threshold of full sovereign power.

However, as the German jurist Carl Schmitt reminds us, sovereignty manifests itself in the capacity to decide in a state of exception. Without going so far as to adopt his controversial conception, one can nevertheless retain a central idea: sovereignty implies the capacity for autonomous action in the event of a major threat. Can the European Union decide and act autonomously against a criminal organization operating simultaneously in ten Member States? Today, the answer remains uncertain.

The problem is not the lack of cooperation. It is the lack of authority. Cooperation relies on the voluntary coordination of sovereign actors. Authority relies on superior and autonomous legal competence.

As long as the Union remains in the first model, it depends on the alignment of national priorities. Yet, priorities change with governments, electoral cycles, and internal political contexts. Conversely, a true federal power in criminal policing guarantees:

• Strategic continuity;
• A unified chain of command;
• An independent capacity for initiative;
• Judicial coherence on a continental scale.

The question raised by the "European FBI" is therefore not only one of operational efficiency. It questions the very nature of the Union: does it wish to remain a sophisticated international organization, or become a political community endowed with its own sovereign core? But is this even possible? This is where the debate leaves technical grounds to join that of European constitutional theory.

5. The European Union facing the federal moment: from cooperation to authority?

5.1. American federation and European Union: the difference in essence

Comparing the European Union to the United States may seem excessive. Yet, this comparison is enlightening, provided one properly understands what distinguishes a federal State from a union of States.

The United States is a sovereign federal State. Its Constitution establishes a central government endowed with its own competencies, superior to those of the federated states in the domains attributed to it. The hierarchy of norms is clear: federal law prevails. Federal institutions have direct legitimacy. The FBI acts on behalf of a federal executive power derived from a unified constitutional sovereignty.

The European Union, on the other hand, legally remains a union of sovereign States. It has a legal personality, institutions, and its own law, but it does not constitute a State. It does not possess a general competence, but rather conferred competencies. Above all, it does not hold a monopoly on coercion independent of the Member States, unlike the American system, in the Weberian sense of the term.

In other words, the United States has permanently transferred a part of its sovereignty to a federal center. The Member States of the European Union have delegated competencies, but retain ultimate control of the constitutional order. This difference is essential. In a federal State, the federal police acts because it embodies a recognized superior political authority. In the European Union, police cooperation relies on a permanent agreement between national governments.

5.2. Moving beyond the "unfinished federation"

This is what European integration theorists sometimes call an "unfinished federation" or an "unidentified political object". The Union possesses certain attributes of a State (currency, Court of Justice, Parliament elected by universal suffrage), but not its complete sovereign core.

As Alexander Hamilton recalled in The Federalist Papers, a lasting political union presupposes a power capable of acting directly on individuals and not only on governments. As long as European action passes exclusively through States, it remains indirect, mediated, and dependent. Internal security perfectly illustrates this structural limit.

The status quo presents three major weaknesses:

• Political dependence: a transnational operation requires the alignment of national priorities.
• Strategic discontinuity: policies vary according to electoral cycles.
• Normative fragmentation: penal and procedural divergences by country slow down action.

5.3. Principles for a European institutional model

However, a sudden federal leap would be politically unrealistic and legally complex. The Union cannot become a State by simple decree. The question then becomes: how to design an institutional model that strengthens European authority without negating national diversity? A credible "European FBI" should respect three principles: subsidiarity, specialization, and democratic legitimacy.

The new agency would have exclusive competence for:

• Transnational organized crime;
• Terrorism;
• Major cybercrime;
• Money laundering linked to these offenses.

Purely national offenses would remain the responsibility of the States.

The agency could:

• Open an investigation when at least three Member States are involved;
• Intervene at the request of a State;
• Act upon referral by the expanded European Public Prosecutor's Office.

It would have authorized European agents, operating in cooperation with national authorities, but placed under a single chain of command. The European Public Prosecutor's Office would become the judicial arm of this specialized federal police. Its mandate would be extended to serious transnational crimes. It would effectively guarantee:

• The independence of prosecutions;
• Procedural unity;
• Respect for fundamental rights.

It would therefore not be a total constitutional leap towards a federal State, but a coherent sectoral deepening with the logic of progressive integration that has characterized the Union since 1957.

6. Conclusion: security, the next threshold of integration?

To conclude, the debate on a European FBI is not about mechanically importing the American model. It is about answering a strictly European question: Can a political union sustainably guarantee the security of its citizens without having a sovereign instrument adapted to the scale of the threats?

The European Union is not a federal State, but it is no longer a simple international organization either. It finds itself in an unclassifiable institutional in-between. Organized crime, however, is no longer in this in-between. It has already integrated the continent. The decision now belongs to Europeans: accept the structural vulnerability of fragmented cooperation or cross a new threshold of integration that is targeted, regulated, and democratically legitimized.

Because ultimately, the question is not whether Europe should copy the United States. It is whether it wants to become a political power in its own right. European integration has always progressed in response to shortcomings and crises revealed by reality. Common market, single currency, free movement: each step has been the consequence of a gap between the growing interdependence of States and the weakness of common instruments.

Internal security could well constitute the next threshold. Organized crime is already acting on a continental scale. It exploits European freedoms, bypasses legal borders, and adapts its strategies to national divergences.

Therefore, the debate on a "European FBI" goes beyond the sole policing issue. It questions the political nature of the Union. Creating a specialized federal police force, strictly competent for serious transnational crimes and democratically regulated, would not mean the disappearance of national sovereignties. It would be an acknowledgment that in the era of globalized criminal networks, the protection of freedoms requires a common capacity for action.

If the EU chooses power, then security can no longer remain the blind spot of its construction and will imply all the institutional changes necessary for its regional establishment.

(1) Article 86 TFEU allows for the creation of the European Public Prosecutor's Office (EPPO) to investigate and prosecute offenses affecting the financial interests of the European Union. It provides that its competencies can be extended to serious cross-border crime by a unanimous decision of the Member States. In the event of disagreement, a group of at least nine States can establish the Prosecutor's Office via enhanced cooperation.