Removals of ‘Dangerous’ Mobile EU Citizens: Public Order and Security as a Police Paradigm
| Published date | 01 August 2024 |
| DOI | http://doi.org/10.1177/09646639231207353 |
| Author | Jukka Könönen |
| Date | 01 August 2024 |
| Subject Matter | Articles |
Removals of ‘Dangerous’
Mobile EU Citizens: Public
Order and Security as a
Police Paradigm
Jukka Könönen
Institute of Criminology and Legal Policy, University
of Helsinki, Helsinki, Finland
Abstract
Despite being frequently invoked in everyday police work and immigration enforcement
to justify coercive measures, public order and security remains an ambiguous legal con-
cept. For EU citizens, the Citizens’Rights Directive stipulates public order and security
grounds to provide a higher threshold against removals than criminal convictions alone.
However, the removal grounds for EU citizens were founded on even less than criminal
convictions in analysis of 100 removal orders for mobile Estonian and Romanian citizens
in Finland. Ultimately, the removal orders relied on the assumption of future crimes and
invoked a conception of ‘dangerous individuals’with criminal tendencies, even based on
single minor offences and administrative penal orders without criminal convictions.
Notwithstanding various legal meanings, I argue that the required public order and
security grounds for the removal of EU citizens corresponded to police conceptions
of mobile populations as a potential source of criminality and a threat to social order.
Keywords
crime control, deportation, EU citizens, police, public order
Introduction
Following security concerns associated with immigration, the deportation of unwanted
foreign nationals representing a threat to public order and security has become one of
Corresponding author:
Jukka Könönen, Institute of Criminology and Legal Policy, University of Helsinki, Helsinki 00014, Finland.
Email: jukka.kononen@helsinki.fi; jukka.kononen@gmail.com
Article
Social & Legal Studies
2024, Vol. 33(4) 601–619
© The Author(s) 2023
Article reuse guidelines:
sagepub.com/journals-permissions
DOI: 10.1177/09646639231207353
journals.sagepub.com/home/sls
the policy priorities in Western countries. Despite the prevalent conception of depor-
tations as forced removals from the Global North to precarious circumstances in the
Global South, there is limited comprehensive information on actual deportation pol-
icies across countries. Considering the fact that a significant share of removals from
Europe have been enforced to former socialist countries –in particular, Ukraine,
Albania, Russia and Georgia (Frontex, 2021) –the Eastern European dimension of
the deportation regimes has received surprisingly limited attention. Notwithstanding
considerable differences in the enforcement of removals and targeted groups among
the EU Member States (Brandariz and Fernández-Bessa, 2020; Leerkes and van
Houte, 2020), the deportation regimes share an intra-European aspect, as removals
are implemented from one Member State to another. In addition to removals of
asylum-seekers under the Dublin Regulation and third-country nationals possessing
legal residence status in another Member State (Könönen, 2020), the immigration
enforcement measures imposed on EU citizens consist of ‘an unaccounted dimension
of the European deportation apparatus’(Brandariz, 2021). Although EU statistics and
policy reports only cover immigration enforcement measures on third-country
nationals, the removal of Eastern European EU citizens has been a common practice
in many European countries: for example, in France (Vra
̆biescu, 2021), Italy
(McMahon, 2012), Norway (Franko, 2020), Finland (Könönen, 2020) and Spain
(Brandariz and Fernández-Bessa, 2020).
While several scholars have drawn attention to the discriminatory treatment of the
Eastern European Roma minority (van Baar et al., 2019; Vra
̆biescu, 2021) and their
removals due to an assumed burden on the welfare state (e.g. Barker, 2017; Lafleur
and Mescoli, 2018), there is limited official information and empirical research on the
grounds and administrative practices for the removal of EU citizens –in particular, con-
cerning criminal offences. Notwithstanding their privileged position compared to third-
country nationals due to free movement and higher protection against removals, the
Member States can expel EU citizens on grounds of public policy, public security and
public health, as stipulated in the Citizens’Rights Directive (2004/38/EC).
1
As legal
studies examining the case law of the Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU)
have pointed out, a threat to public order and security remains a highly ambiguous
concept even for the expulsion of permanently residing EU citizens convicted of
serious offences (Coutts, 2019; Kochenov and Pirker, 2013; Kostakopoulou, 2014;
Mancano, 2018; Maslowski, 2015; Neier, 2021). According to the Directive, expulsion
measures should be based exclusively on the personal conduct of the individual that
‘must represent a genuine, present and sufficiently serious threat affecting one of the fun-
damental interests of society’(Art. 27(2)). However, the Directive only stipulates abstract
preconditions such as the proportionality principle and prohibition on using expulsion
measures to serve economic ends or general prevention (Art. 27(1–2)) without providing
any clear definition for a threat to public order and security. In particular, the Directive
leaves open the criteria for removals based on criminal offences, as it only states that
‘Previous criminal convictions shall not in themselves constitute grounds for taking
such measures’(Art. 27(2)). Due to ambiguities in EU law, public order and security
grounds can be invoked flexibly to justify removal measures for EU citizens, with signifi-
cant implications for EU citizenship.
602 Social & Legal Studies 33(4)
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