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Attitudes towards migrants and refugees are created and reflected at the level of public policies, as well as in local communities which cultivate traditional approaches and a specific worldview. The refugee crisis in Europe in the mid-2010s showed how public opinion translated into voting behaviour and became a source of strength for nationalist anti-immigrant movements and parties across the continent. East-Central Europe was no exception, regardless of the absence of a long-term, massive inflow of refugees. Nevertheless, the migration crisis created a new political narrative which exploited deeply rooted resentments, complexes, and fears. This article aims to analyse the official policy responses to the refugee crisis in the four East-Central European countries: Poland, Hungary, Slovakia, and the Czech Republic, which together constitute the so-called Visegrad Four. It puts the emphasis on the discriminatory practice of misnaming the refugees, which became deeply anchored in the political discourse of these countries. Based on a qualitative content analysis supplemented by the findings of public opinion polls, the argument developed in the article is that reluctant and defensive attitudes towards the refugees have been determined by the revival of parochialism as a radical reaction to the challenges of global trends and supra-local processes. The theoretical framing of the refugee problem is built on politicization, in connection with the concept of parochialism, seen from political and social perspectives, and the meaning of the use of the misnomer as a policy instrument. The article concludes that the migration crisis petrified traditional cleavages at the supra-local level, reinforcing simultaneously the sense of parochial altruism and hostility towards “the other.”

The EU has been under severe strain as a free-travel area. The migration crisis of the mid-2010s and the current Covid-19 pandemic have exerted a negative impact on the freedom of movement in the EU and the undisturbed crossing of internal borders within the Schengen area. Direct effects and long-term consequences of the prolonged crisis have shown that the dynamics of integration, which are determined by spillover effects of transnational processes, are counterposed by a politicization of domestically-embedded issues of security governance. This assumption underpins the postfunctionalist approach to European integration proposed originally by Hooghe and Marks. The tendency towards longstanding derogations from the Schengen regime, termed “internal rebordering,” should be juxtaposed with efforts of the European Commission towards a full restoration of the Schengen area without controls at internal borders. The argument developed in this article holds that internal rebordering has been embedded in the logic of the EU as an area of freedom, security, and justice comprising the Schengen area as its territorial manifestation. The rebordering processes in the EU and in the Schengen area have questioned the principle of “constraining dissensus” underlaying the postfunctionalist approach.

Already, the 21st century has seen an unprecedented increase in cross-border movements of people, goods, information, and financial capital. Numerous incentives and facilitators have expanded international interconnectedness and mobility, so altering the conventional nature and functions of state borders, as captured by the “new mobilities” paradigm. Yet the weaponization of global economic interdependencies and other trends towards deglobalization mean there is now a growing pressure on governments to re-establish the conventional attributes of borders. Against the current mobility and security backdrop, this collection of articles takes stock of the meaning, roles, and practices of border activities. Now is the moment to consider the special role that borders perform as an institution of state security in a contemporary world exposed to massive international flows of people and goods, as well as technologically-driven control and management systems.

Police and Customs Cooperation Centres (PCCCs) have been established throughout the Schengen area as an important institution reinforcing mechanisms and procedures of cross-border law enforcement cooperation. Since the first PCCC became operational in Offenburg in 1999, about 40 centres have emerged, performing various functions and tasks in the area of internal security and law enforcement and constituting a valuable local tool of direct cross-border cooperation. In the reflection period preceding the 2009 Stockholm Programme, the so-called Future Group (High Level Advisory Group on EU Internal Security) suggested that the EU should establish a model of PCCC applicable to all member states and serving as "real police-customs centres of crisis management capable of handling events on an international scale." This chapter seeks to verify the above proposal and to reflect further on the importance of PCCCs for internal security of the EU and for cross-border cooperation in the Schengen zone. Several PCCCs will be analysed in order to extract similarities and differences as functional and institutional prerequisites for the elaboration of a framework PCCC. The evaluation of the role that PCCCs perform in everyday cross-border police cooperation will be juxtaposed with new instruments of Schengen governance, adopted in October 2013, particularly new provisions on common rules on the temporary reintroduction of border control at internal borders.

Internal security has an increasing impact on the overall security policies of the EU. This chapter seeks to examine how strategic intelligence at the EU level has contributed to cross-border cooperation in the areas of law enforcement and criminal justice. Relevant agencies, mostly Europol, Eurojust and Frontex, are assessed in terms of their involvement in criminal information exchange, analysis and intelligence sharing. The chapter also highlights the complex network architecture of institutional linkages and emphasises specific elements of intelligence tradecraft adopted in the internal security hub. The European Criminal Intelligence Model, the EU policy cycle for organised and serious international crime and risk analysis models are evaluated as intelligence-driven approaches to internal security.

EU foreign policy and external relations constitute another dimension of the EU intelligence community. This chapter explains the relevance of socio-cultural intelligence for the EU’s external activities. The political-diplomatic hub established within EEAS is described as a set of intelligence tools and practices related to the monitoring of areas outside the Union. The role of EEAS is analysed in the context of the surveillance and assessment of the external environment of the Union. The significance of the COREU network in matters of foreign affairs and security is also assessed. Finally, the case of socio-cultural intelligence practised by the EU during the Arab Spring in North Africa is analysed in detail.

The concluding chapter makes an overall assessment of the EU intelligence community as a cooperative network based on an enhanced capacity to deliver and share. It highlights specific features of this community as a complex network of agencies and practices dedicated to securing strategic EU interests. Referring to the metaphor of ‘hunters and gatherers’, it discusses the impediments to the establishment of a single EU intelligence agency. It concludes with a thesis that the complex network of institutions, agencies and services involved in the gathering, processing, analysing and exchanging of intelligence in the framework of EU law makes a remarkable contribution to EU security policies and strengthens the preventive capability of EU agencies and national authorities.