International Journal on Criminology Volume 4, Number 2, Winter 2016 | Page 127

Private Security on a Global Level
and port safety in a similar manner with the ISPS (International Ship and Port Facility
Security) Code of 2002. In this area, the UN Security Council’s resolution of April
2011 to intensify the fight against piracy off the coast of Somalia has also played a
driving role for private security, with the development of legislation, particularly in
Europe, oriented toward the employment of private security.
It is certainly true that these interstate decisions do not require the use of
private security. They stick to shared principles and standards of safety, and should be
adopted and enacted in national legislation. Nonetheless, they have a strong knock-on
effect to the advantage of the sector and of convergence. Methods become similar,
particularly because, through the principle of peer-to-peer evaluation, they need to be
equivalent and comparable.
The convergence vector of international institutional decision-making is
more visible and effective at the European level, because of political, judiciary, and
administrative integration that is stronger—and this is rarely noticed—thanks to the
exclusion of private security from the Services in the Internal Market Directive:
1. The accession of new states to the European Union in the 2000s (Latvia,
Estonia, Lithuania, Slovenia, Slovakia, Hungary, Cyprus, Romania, and
Bulgaria) largely coincided with the implementation of a legal regime for
private security.
2. The Court of Justice of the European Communities (CJEC) was a driving
force in the area of regulatory harmonization, via procedures brought by the
European Commission against states with legislative shortcomings. Five
member states were in this situation at the beginning of the 2000s 37 and had
to update their legislation in order to abolish limitations on the nationality
of security officers and legal entities, to abolish minimum share capital
requirements, etc.
3. From an administrative perspective, the Services in the Internal Market
Directive of 2006, which did not include private security services, nonetheless
formed the basis for initial harmonization in the field of private security,
specifically for the transport of cash across borders, along with the EU
regulation of cross-border transport of cash of 2011. 38 Finally, recognition of
37
Judgment of October 29, 1998, Commission/Spain ; Judgment of March 9, 2000, Commission/
Belgium (C-355/98); Judgment of May 31, 2001, Commission/Italy (C-283/99); Judgment of April
29, 2004, Commission/Portugal (C-171/02); Judgment of October 7, 2004, Commission/Netherlands
(C-189/03); Judgment of January 26, 2006, Commission/Spain (C-514/03); Judgment of December
13, 2007, Commission/Italy (C405/05).
38
Regulation (EU) No 1214/2011 of the European Parliament and of the Council of November 16,
2011 on the professional cross-border transport of euro cash by road between euro-area Member
States.
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