In dealing with problems of law and order, has the EU become a police super-state?

There are some forms of cross-border crimes are committed in European country, such as drug-trafficking, burglary, robbery, and fraud against the European Community. Focusing on the two main cross-border crimes, ‘organised crime’ and ‘white-collar crimes’ (1988, p.184). The organized crime groups professionally take advantage of the difference of law between each country, and make a profit from the cross-border crimes. Before the fall of ‘Iron Curtain’, the emergence of domestic organized crime groups was very much concerned. By dealing with cross-border organized crimes, people who got rich in so-called ‘shadow economy’ (2000, p.44). The groups exploit the change of social conditions, and then adapt quickly developing new opportunity, as an example of drug-trafficking. Another serious cross-border crime is fraud, which against funds of the EU, estimating approximately 50 billion pounds, such as software piracy, plastic card frauds (1998, p.183). In the UK, particularly, are damaged by the fraudsters during 1990s before the new prevention measures were introduced. They are involved in the international networks and crime markets.  

In order to control and prevent those cross-border crimes, European countries accelerate to establish the frameworks for cross-border police cooperation for the purpose of the investigation and successful prosecution.  According to Van Reenen, there are two forms of police co-operation in terms of internationalisation that the police can enter, ‘horizontal integration’ and ‘vertical integration’ (1999, p.81). As the former, authorized police officers of one national force act in another country, for example, police have a right to pursue a criminal across a national border. Through the system of UCLAF (Unite de la Coordination de la Lutte Anti-Fraude) (1999, p.84), which is the similar approach to organising a European FBI, the police is created with central authority over several countries is the latter form. The primal attempt to handle cross-border policing is Europol. By changing and spreading cross-border crime, the different approaches were inevitable to deal with it. Although one of the factors under the Treaty of Maastricht is the idea that all nations of the European Union have the right to live and work anywhere in the EU, there are great diversity in the organisation of policing. The Treaty covers cooperation in the fields of justice and home affairs. However, there is an increasing concerned with policing control, when it comes to considering human right. For achieving a police super-state in the European Union, the police have to control all the nations and every moments, and presumably collecting the privacy as a database. For instance, the police are not able to watch child abuse occurred in a house.

As we have seen, the differences between countries in their definition of policing will have increasing legal significance. Because the police cannot control all of the crimes committed behind human right. In other words, human right will be menaced, if the law is under police control. Through the argument above, it appears that cross-border is not a problem of economics, but of political issue that should cope with each authority of countries. However, each European countries have different culture and different tradition, so the legal regulation of agreements and treaties should enforce throughout Europe; otherwise the European Union will be considerably difficult to become a police super-state.