Introduction

Understanding the challenges facing policing is usually hedged about with caution, given the potential for unforeseen developments to change the basis of any analysis. This chapter is no exception to this general observation. Some expectations about challenges to policing may not materialise at all (Crawford, 2002), some may mutate into something altogether more sinister (Europol, 2011), and a few may make the impact predicted for them (Edwards and Gill, 2003).

The states that make up the regions of Europe interpret such ‘hard’ policing challenges differently, depending on what social, economic, political, historical or national compound lens they look through: what is a jurisdictional problem in Latvia may not be in Greece. Aspects of illegal trafficking that impact heavily on the Slovenian police (smuggling routes through the high mountain passes) may barely register with Portugal's gendarmerie. Stolen vehicles may be a problem for the Belgians, but the Slovak police are more preoccupied with drug smuggling. To try to bring coherence to this very disparate, and often fragmented, picture of the challenges facing Europe's police forces, sometimes complicated by the remits and approaches of the law enforcement agencies involved, we group the views of strategic police leaders thematically, we analyse their proposed solutions and we identify some of the likely barriers to potential success.