Justice and home affairs: europeanization as a government-controlled process

This chapter examines both the ‘uploading’ and the ‘downloading’ dimensions of Europeanization in justice and home affairs. Germany has been quite active – and in some cases, such as Schengen and Europol – also relatively successful in trying to ‘upload’ domestic preferences and models to the European level. But Europeanization has remained very much a government-led process with hardly any impact on public opinion and society. The ‘downloading’ has been largely limited to selective legislative changes as a result of the growing EC/EU acquis, and to the increased involvement of administrative and law-enforcement agencies in the European co-operation procedures and structures. One of main reasons for this imbalance between the ‘uploading’ and ‘downloading’ dimensions of Europeanization is the limited interest of the political establishment in the Europeanization of internal security issues that are still considered as valuable national ‘vote winners’.