Abstract

In the Federal Republic of Germany and, even more so in the European Union, the term “police“ does not connote a single entity but rather a complex multilevel structure, in which decentralised police forces have to cooperate with one another, have to be coordinated on a central level and have to be supplemented by some police functions that have been shifted from the decentralised to the central level altogether. Working structures of – both horizontal and vertical – police cooperation are the key to successful policing in a federal or supranational system. The Federal Republic of Germany, in which police powers reside primarily with the Länder, has developed techniques of police cooperation that have worked successfully for a long time and can serve as an example of how problems of trans-border police cooperation in a multilevel system can be solved. More recently, in Europe, too, both within and outside of the legal framework of the European Union (EU), structures of multilevel police cooperation have been emerging. The European Union aims to become an “area of freedom, security and justice“ that transcends national borders. It provides for mutual police cooperation among the Member States and – above all through Europol – is starting to fulfil some police functions on a supranational level, too. Moreover, European countries have intensified their mutual assistance and cooperation in police matters through a multiplicity of bilateral and multilateral treaties that are independent of EU institutions. This article analyses and compares the structures of police cooperation both in the Federal Republic of Germany and within the European Union. Although there are, of course, substantial differences between the constitutional law of a federal state, on the one hand, and the public international law / supranational European law as applied among the Member States of the EU on the other hand, one can identify remarkable similarities as to the problems of police cooperation that have to be solved and as to the techniques of how they are or can be solved. Without such techniques of effective police cooperation, security cannot be successfully guaranteed in Germany and in the European Union.