Criminological scientific research is often the result of public and/or private astonishment. On Monday 15th December 2008 the ‘livre blanc’ or white paper – ‘La participation de la sécurité privée à la sécurité générale en Europe, Private Security and its role in European security’ – was presented to the public and the press at ‘Place Beauveau’ in Paris by Michèle Alliot-Marie, the then French Minister of Interior, Pierre Monzani, the then director of INHES and Marc Pissens, president of CoESS. The presentation was held during the first organized European Summit on Private Security or ‘1er Sommet européen de la Sécurité Privée’. The summit was called the first one, because it was first time officially endorsed by a standing European Union presidency. It immediately took our scientific interest and raised some research questions which are to be answered here. These questions are multiple. Firstly, how did this white paper get into the priority list of the French EU presidency if it was not mentioned
before? Knowing the French, rather unfavorable, attitude towards private security, then there surely must be a much broader reason. We are trying to argue that the security discourse of the French president Nicolas Sarkozy had to do with it. As a second research question, were are also examining the impact of INHES and CoESS in producing this white paper and give a brief summary of it. The last section is reserved for comments and we will conclude it with ‘another’ critical assessment based on a
scientific, political and economic point of view. Also the possible impact of this withe paper for the future EU presidencies held by e.g. Sweden (2009), Spain and Belgium (2010) will be researched as much as possible.