The Economic Cost of Terrorism at European Union Level

EasyChair Preprint 5024

Abstract

Terrorism is a phenomenon that brings danger in society, so, in addition to the direct impact felt by victims, terrorism also affects the well-being of the population as a whole. The fight against terrorism at the level of the European Union involves the identification and application of measures adopted at the level of international organizations such as the UN and the Council of Europe. In recent years, a number of major terrorist attacks in EU Member States have put the fight against terrorism at the top of the agenda for combating terrorism at European level. This strategy has as main objective the elaboration of policies that, applied, to ensure the security at a high and uniform level throughout the Union. The application of these measures rests with the Member States that are directly responsible for the implementation of the policies. This article aims to highlighting the main purpose of terrorism, the costs that terrorist attacks incur in the territories under attack, and to discuss the appropriate counter-terrorism strategies adopted at EU level. Using the existing statistical data, correlating them with the information available in the specialized literature regarding terrorism, mainly, we will discover that not the direct costs of terrorism are the highest, but the indirect costs, which are largely a consequence of people's reactions to terrorism. Secondly, we discuss the European Union's response to terrorism. Undoubtedly, responses to terrorist events are rational and EU policies well defined. Although the incidence of theoretic attacks has diminished, it cannot be completely eliminated due to circumstances that no longer pertain to the formulation or observance of EU policies. Here, we will discover that these circumstances are mainly related to the affiliation of people already in the EU territory to jihadist groups, xenophobia, racism, etc.

Keyphrases: European Union, Terrorism, counter-terrorism policies, the economic impact of terrorism

@booklet{EasyChair:5024,
  author    = {Dumitru-Mihai Luca and Gabriel Căriman},
  title     = {The Economic Cost of Terrorism at European Union Level},
  howpublished = {EasyChair Preprint 5024},
  year      = {EasyChair, 2021}}