Cross-border Use of Police Powers within the EU – A Finnish, Norwegian and Swedish Perspective

Abstract

Cross-border use of police powers today represents a vital part of the European police cooperation that aims at preventing criminality within the European area, maintaining law and order and facilitating proceedings against criminal offenders. This cooperation can, on a general level, be divided into either information exchange or operational cooperation (which may include the use of police powers on foreign territory). The focus of this article is to consider European police cooperation in light of the Nordic police cooperation between Finland, Norway and Sweden concerning the use of police powers on foreign states’ territory. In order to do this, the different forms of police cooperation involving the use of police powers on foreign territory facilitated by the EU-instruments are presented. The implementation in Finnish, Norwegian and Swedish law of these EU-instruments is then analysed and compared with Nordic equivalents. Finally, and on the basis of the former analysis, a discussion on European police cooperation in general, differences in implementation in Finland, Norway and Sweden and the role of Nordic police cooperation in view of the EU-instruments is endeavoured