Civil Security Governance Systems in the New EU Member States: Closer to ‘Old Europe’ or a Distinctive Path?

Abstract

Natural and man-made risks cause substantial and growing losses in Europe and the world (Howell, 2013; Smith, 2013), which poses challenges for national civil security governance systems (CSGSs), understood here as the organizations and processes engaged in the prevention of, preparedness for, mitigation of, response to and recovery from crises and disasters (see Bossong and Hegemann, in the introduction to this volume). Yet, even across European countries such systems have only fully emerged over the last three decades in a rather uneven manner (Quarantelli, 2000). In Western European countries, an important shift occurred in the last quarter of the 20th century when more attention was paid to the protection of civilians during peacetime, which we call civil security, rather than to military defence. In the New Member States of the EU and especially in Central European states, however, civil security started to gain importance in national policy-making and post-Communist transition only since the very late 1990s (Brazova et al., 2014).

This research was partially funded by the EU Seventh Framework Programme for research, technological development and demonstration under grant agreement no 284678, ANVIL — Analyses of Civil Security Systems in Europe; co-financed by Poland’s Ministry for Science and Higher Education from funds for science in 2013–2014 granted to an international project, and by the Specific Research Grant of the Charles University in Prague, Faculty of Social Sciences Nr. SVV 2014 260 112.