Innere Sicherheit als Thema der Parteiprogramme zur Wahl des Europäischen Parlaments 2014

Home Affairs is one of the most controversial policy fields both within nation states andthe European Union. Moreover, the NSA affair has led to an increasing awareness of internalsecurity based on information and communication technology (ICT). On the onehand, it sensitizes for questions of European security with regards to foreign surveillance.On the other hand, it underlines the salient conflict between interests of ensuring internalsecurity with means of information technology as well as interests of individual freedomand privacy. Questions arising from these issues are how and in which way European partiesconsidered them in their party manifestos for the elections to the European Parliamentin 2014 and to what extent the NSA affair might have changed the parties’ stances. Basedon these concerns, the differences of party manifestos in Germany and the United Kingdomare analysed in this paper. Referring to examples of U.S. and European surveillanceactivities, it is revealed in how far the public debate is integrated in the European partymanifestos. [ZParl, vol. 45, no. 3, pp. 546 – 566]