Governing Cocaine Supply and Organized Crime from Latin America and the Caribbean

Subtitle
The Changing Security Logics in European Union External Policy
Publication Name
European Journal on Criminal Policy and Research
Volume, number, page
22:1, pp.1-18
Year of Publication
2016
Author(s)
STAMBOL Eva Magdalena
Editor(s)
SAVONA Ernesto
Organization Name
Springer
Publisher
Springer
City
Atlanta
Country of Publication
United States
Full Date
March 2016
ISBN or ISSN
1572-9869
Category
Academic articles
Theme
Subregion - European Union
BIREGIONAL RELATIONS UE - LAC
Association Agreeements
Strategic Partnerships
BIREGIONAL DIALOGUES UE-LAC
Government
Keyword(s)
Drug Policy
European Union
Latin America
Caribbean
Organized Crime
European Security
Citizen Security
Internal Security
Security policy
Cocaine
Drug traffic
Foreign policy cooperation
Foreign Policy
Europe policy
Abstract
The logics of the European Union’s policy and practices against narcotic drugs in Latin America and the Caribbean (LAC) have undergone a substantial shift the past decade: from development to security. Based on an empirical mapping of the EU’s drug-related projects in LAC, this article argues that an ‘integrated and balanced’ approach to drugs policy is being replaced by a bifurcation between the broader domains of development policy and security policy. Questions are raised as to how the EU’s projects on development and security might counteract one another, and how the Union’s programme aimed at dismantling transnational organized crime along the cocaine trafficking routes to Europe might have unintended consequences. While keeping in mind the shifting tectonics of the international drug prohibition consensus, the article goes on to analyze the increasingly salient security rationale in EU external drugs policy against the backdrop of the EU’s emerging role as a global security actor. In doing so, it touches upon the intrinsic tensions between human rights and (supra) national security.