foreign fighters – KSLR EU Law Blog

Dario Chiari, LLM (King’s College London); LLB (University of Bologna)

This post tries to show the evolution of the relationship between the concepts of “national” and “Union” citizenship in light of certain judgements of the Court of Justice of the European Union (hereinafter CJEU or the Court). Using principles extrapolated from these rulings, this blog post will examine how certain CJEU principles can help deal with contemporaneous issues, like the question of citizens fighting for foreign terrorist organizations (e.g. the foreign fighters). In the last few years Europe has witnessed the rise of the phenomenon of nationals of Member States (hereinafter MSs) who decide to leave to join international terrorist organizations. The reaction of the States has been uneven, and some have proposed and implemented as a solution, the withdrawal of the citizenship.[1] Have the MSs a limitless power to withdraw citizenship? And if not, to which kind of criteria are they bound? Continue reading “Authoritative citizenship withdrawal and foreign fighters issue”

Fahrid Chishty
Second year undergraduate student and Dickson Poon Scholar of the LLB in Politics, Philosophy & Law (PPL) at King’s College, London

The European legal order is beset by an unprecedented challenge today. Domestic nationals, prevailingly of Western European origin, are engaged at the centre of ideological conflicts in Iraq and Syria in increasing numbers. Against the backdrop of sectarian conflict and the proliferation of terrorist networks, European ‘foreign fighters’ pose a significant threat, upon return, to the security and prosperity of their Member States (MS) of origin. National governments have enacted legislation in recent months in order to stem the tide of European fighters leaving and re-entering Union or State territory, accentuating the need for a collaborative and synergetic regional strategy. This article assesses the impediments, actual and potential, to the prevention and prosecution of foreign fighter criminality in the Middle East region (ME) under European Union law. It identifies potential lacunae in the law, concluding with the case for EU-wide legislation facilitating the arraignment of foreign fighters consistently across MS, as proposed by Gilles De Kerchove, Brussels’ Counter-Terrorism Coordinator (CTC), at the Commission in December 2014.[1]

Continue reading “Impediments Under European Law To The Prevention And Prosecution Of Foreign Fighter Crimes”