The challenges of cybercrime governance in the European Union
Information and Communications Technologies, in particular the Internet, have been an increasingly important aspect of global social, political and economic life for two decades, and are the backbone of the global information society today. Their evolution and development has brought many benefits but also the threat and practice of serious cyber attacks, cyber espionage and cybercrime within the virtual, networked ecosystem that we live in. In this context, the European Union over the past ten years has been developing its policies towards cyber threats. Drastically reducing cybercrime featured as a key priority objective in the Cybersecurity Strategy of the European Union (2013) delineating several lines of action, including enhanced operational capability to combat cybercrime. Focusing on the operational aspects and in particular the European Cybercrime Centre’s Joint Cybercrime Action Taskforce, this article demonstrates how this represents novel, collaborative and flexible (informal) governance bounded by a broader formal milieu, reflecting the complexity of cybercrime investigations. It is also shown that, despite the relative success of J-CAT, challenges still remain.