The European Union’s Response to the CBRN Terrorist Threat: A Multiple Streams Approach

This article examines how the European Union (EU) has sought to address the threat of CBRN terrorism using Kingdon’s Multiple Streams Framework. It demonstrates that the EU has significantly developed its response to the CBRN terrorist threat, but that it has followed a piecemeal approach to a significant extent. It also argues that, in contrast to the intense debates about the CBRN
terrorist threat and the large number of policy proposals generated, the EU has only adopted a limited number of ‘hard law’ instruments, although some of those have had a significant impact. This stands in contrast to the large body of ‘soft law’ that has gradually developed, albeit with all its limitations.