EU Police Cooperation : An analysis on the extent of Spanish and Dutch police cooperation in EU organized crime prevention

Sammanfattning: This is an analysis that aims to measure the extent of Spanish and Dutch law enforcement cooperation on issues of transnational organized crime prevention. As major transit hubs for the international narcotics market, Spain and the Netherlands are of particular interest to Europe as a whole, but also specifically Swedish policy-makers who have highlighted the narcotics trade as a key issue in domestic criminal activity. As Swedish policy-makers discuss new ways to tackle organized crime, to which international criminal mechanisms are a root cause, it is of interest to analyze the extent of international cooperative efforts that are already in place in key countries. This analysis has used the policy cycle model to construct sentence rules in accordance with the method of content analysis to provide a measurement on the extent of cooperative efforts by Spain and the Netherlands with other Eu member states and Europol. This is done by analyzing Reports by the European Monitoring Centre for Drugs and Drug Addiction (EMCDDA) and news-style articles posted by Europol. What has been found is that Spanish and Dutch efforts in cooperative responses are generally extensive, though the kind of participation that Spain and the Netherlands engage in differ. Spain primarily focuses on cooperation between law enforcing agencies, while the Netherlands are providers of vital intel to police operations and wide research into the issue.