TREVI
TREVI was an intergovernmental network, or forum, of national officials from ministries of justice and the interior outside the European Community framework, proposed during the European Council meeting in Rome, 1–2 December 1975. It was formalized in Luxembourg on 29 June 1976 at a meeting of the European Council's Interior Ministers. It ceased to exist when it was integrated into the so-called Justice and Home Affairs (JHA) pillar of the European Union (EU) upon the entry into force of the Treaty of Maastricht in 1993.
The European Council in Rome, p.9 (Conclusions of the meeting, 2 Dec 1975)[1]
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The first TREVI meeting at the level of senior officials was held in Rome where the famous Trevi Fountain is located and the meeting was chaired by a Dutchman by the name of Fonteijn (English: Fountain). In some French textbooks, it is noted that TREVI stands for Terrorisme, Radicalisme, Extrémisme et Violence Internationale.
The creation of TREVI was prompted by several terrorist acts, most notably the hostage taking and subsequent massacre during the 1972 Olympic Games in Munich, and the inability of Interpol at that time to effectively assist the European countries in combatting terrorism. While TREVI was initially intended to coordinate effective counterterrorism responses among European governments, it slowly extended its remit to many other issues in crossborder policing between the members of the European Community. Many of the practices and a large part of the structure of the former Third Pillar traced their origins to TREVI.
Timeline for EU evolution
Since the end of World War II, sovereign European countries have entered into treaties and thereby co-operated and harmonised policies (or pooled sovereignty) in an increasing number of areas, in the so-called European integration project or the construction of Europe (French: la construction européenne). The following timeline outlines the legal inception of the European Union (EU)—the principal framework for this unification. The EU inherited many of its present responsibilities from the European Communities (EC), which were founded in the 1950s in the spirit of the Schuman Declaration.
| Legend: S: signing F: entry into force T: termination E: expiry de facto supersession Rel. w/ EC/EU framework: de facto inside outside |
European Union (EU) |
[Cont.] | ||||||||||||||
| European Communities (EC) |
(Pillar I) | |||||||||||||||
| European Atomic Energy Community (EAEC or Euratom) | [Cont.] | |||||||||||||||
 /  /  /  European Coal and Steel Community (ECSC) |
||||||||||||||||
| European Economic Community (EEC) | ||||||||||||||||
| Schengen Rules | European Community (EC) | |||||||||||||||
| 'TREVI' | Justice and Home Affairs (JHA, pillar II) | |||||||||||||||
 North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (NATO) |
[Cont.] | Police and Judicial Co-operation in Criminal Matters (PJCC, pillar II) | ||||||||||||||
  Anglo-French alliance |
[Defence arm handed to NATO] | European Political Co-operation (EPC) | Common Foreign and Security Policy (CFSP, pillar III) | |||||||||||||
 Western Union (WU) |
.svg.png.webp){kind=small} /  Western European Union (WEU) |
[Tasks defined following the WEU's 1984 reactivation handed to the EU] | ||||||||||||||
| [Social, cultural tasks handed to CoE] | [Cont.] | |||||||||||||||
| Council of Europe (CoE) | ||||||||||||||||
- ¹Although not EU treaties per se, these treaties affected the development of the EU defence arm, a main part of the CFSP. The Franco-British alliance established by the Dunkirk Treaty was de facto superseded by WU. The CFSP pillar was bolstered by some of the security structures that had been established within the remit of the 1955 Modified Brussels Treaty (MBT). The Brussels Treaty was terminated in 2011, consequently dissolving the WEU, as the mutual defence clause that the Lisbon Treaty provided for EU was considered to render the WEU superfluous. The EU thus de facto superseded the WEU.
- ²The treaties of Maastricht and Rome form the EU's legal basis, and are also referred to as the Treaty on European Union (TEU) and the Treaty on the Functioning of the European Union (TFEU), respectively. They are amended by secondary treaties.
- ³The European Communities obtained common institutions and a shared legal personality (i.e. ability to e.g. sign treaties in their own right).
- ⁴Between the EU's founding in 1993 and consolidation in 2009, the union consisted of three pillars, the first of which were the European Communities. The other two pillars consisted of additional areas of cooperation that had been added to the EU's remit.
- ⁵The consolidation meant that the EU inherited the European Communities' legal personality and that the pillar system was abolished, resulting in the EU framework as such covering all policy areas. Executive/legislative power in each area was instead determined by a distribution of competencies between EU institutions and member states. This distribution, as well as treaty provisions for policy areas in which unanimity is required and qualified majority voting is possible, reflects the depth of EU integration as well as the EU's partly supranational and partly intergovernmental nature.
- ⁶Plans to establish a European Political Community (EPC) were shelved following the French failure to ratify the Treaty establishing the European Defence Community (EDC). The EPC would have combined the ECSC and the EDC.
References
- "THE EUROPEAN COUNCIL - ROME (1-2 DECEMBER 1975)" (pdf). Documents in the dossier include: The European Council in Rome, European Community Members to Issue EC Citizens a "European Passport", Declaration of Rambouillet 17 November 1975. December 1975.
Further reading
- Anderson, M., M. den Boer, P. Cullen, W. Gilmore, C. Raab and N. Walker. (1995) Policing the European Union. Theory Law and Practice. Oxford: Clarendon Press.
- Hebenton, B. and T. Thomas (1995) Policing Europe. Co-operation, Conflicts and Control. New York: St. Martin's Press Inc.
- Nilsson, H. (2004) ‘The Justice and Home Affairs Council’, in M. Westlake and D. Galloway (eds) The Council of the European Union. London: John Harper Publishing.