The European Union’s Area of Freedom, Security and Justice (AFSJ) relies on an institutional framework that is based on a growing number of legal acts and well-established EU agencies such as Europol and Frontex, consolidated and transferred into the EU framework since the Treaty of Lisbon. The panel looks at recent developments in this area, related to the regulation of new technologies such as artificial intelligence and growing powers of the agencies established for this area.

This paper critically examines the transformation of interaction between European and UK cybersecurity agencies responsible for dealing with hybrid threats coming from foreign nations such as Russia. It investigates changing interagency dynamics from a historical institutionalism perspective in which Brexit, Russian Intervention of European Elections and the Russian invasion of Ukraine are critical junctions of transition.

The paper specifically investigates arguments of the four major cyber security agencies, namely, GCHQ, Home Office, The Foreign Office, National Crime Agency when dealing with Russia related activities. The major argument of this paper is when the Russia threat became an existential threat to the UK, the ‘pass the buck’ interaction that delegates the responsibility to other agencies became a more committed collaboration between UK agencies.

Thousands of refugees and migrants from countries including Iraq, Afghanistan, and Syria were pushed by the Belarusian government toward the EU's external frontiers in 2021. Events such as the one along the border between Belarus and Poland are a vivid illustration of the so-called instrumentalisation of migration, as a tool of hostile foreign policy, act of aggression that has been recognised by the EU Commission. Though destabilizing a nation via state-sponsored mass migration is an extremely powerful tactic, this is not a new phenomenon, nor a novel pressure point to the European Commission. On 14 December 2021, the European Commission proposed a Regulation addressing instrumentalization in the realm of migration and asylum, providing provisional emergency measures for the benefit of Latvia, Lithuania, and Poland, allowing these three Member States to deviate from EU asylum law rules. As a response to an increase in the number of people crossing the border from Belarus, the Polish government declared a state of emergency, which prevented aid workers and journalists from entering the border region, and effectively legalised the use of pushbacks, which are otherwise prohibited by both EU law and international law. The implementation of the Instrumentalisation Regulation has been described as an "hypocrisy trap" and a double standard movement inside the ASFJ, when compared to policy measures advanced during the “so-called” 2015 migration wave. As such, this paper seeks to understand and compare the triggers shaping the EU Migration and Asylum Agenda between the two migration waves, and how polarised EUMS may shape the trilogues within the European Parliament.

Over the past decade, social media platforms have moved from being seen as a topic of niche interest and bemusement to being seen as a real and pervasive threat to state stability and individual safety. From the rise in hate speech, to death threats made against politicians, to the viral spread of disinformation, online discourse is increasingly seen as ‘polluting’ the information ecosystem, with real and detrimental effects. As a result, the Commission has sought to control the creation and dissemination of illegal and abusive content more effectively on social media platforms, including Very Large Online Platforms (VLOPs), in particular through the adoption of the Digital Services Act. Central to the enforcement mechanisms within this Act is the establishment of a new body, the European Board for Digital Services (EBDS). This body is intended to carry out oversight and information exchange practices akin to agencies such as ENISA, with the intent that it acts as a key means of disseminating information, best practices, and awareness of potential threats, coordinating the efforts of the national Digital Service Coordinators. The purpose of this paper is to explore the development of the EDBS in further detail, adopting an institutionalist perspective in order to determine the drivers of the establishment of the EDBS and the underlying rationale for its creation, and to consider the implications for an understanding of cybersecurity that goes beyond the protection of systems and infrastructure, representing an institutional broadening of the AFSJ in the context of illegal and harmful content online.

In April 2021, the European Commission published a proposal for a Regulation on Artificial Intelligence (COM(2021) 206 final) that has been intensively debated in the European Parliament, the Council, in academia and in civil society since then. The paper looks specifically at the impact upon the use of AI in the AFSJ. Policing and criminal justice are not exempted from the scope of the AI regulation, but they may use specific “backdoors” for the use of risky AI applications that would be prohibited or restricted for other state agencies and non-state actors. With the inclusion of security agencies, the draft AI Act is also an attempt to overcome exceptions and opt-outs that characterised the AFSJ in policy areas such as data protection. The paper situates these “backdoors” in the context of normative requirements for the use of AI in a democratic rule of law context, namely fairness, transparency and explainability.