International police co-operation around football matches: Euro 2000 case study

For the European football championships (Euro 2000) held in Belgium and the Netherlands in 2000, authorities embarked on a strategy that involved maximal use of international police co-operation. To evaluate the effort, feedback from foreign police officers deployed during Euro 2000 was explicitly sought. In each host city a team of observers carried out systematic observations and an international monitoring team independently made their own observations. In this paper Euro 2000 is used as a case study to investigate the nature of the international police cooperation in practice and its contribution to the management of public order.