The Counterterrorism Coordinator and the Commissioner for the Security Union: Does the European Union Need Two Top-level Counterterrorism Officials?

Both national and EU officials have repeatedly emphasized the need for a comprehensive and strongly coordinated EU counterterrorism policy in order to bring together the disparate measures taken by the member states, avoid duplication of action, involve uninterested member states, and to present the EU as a coherent counterterrorism actor. To address these concerns, the EU member states agreed to create the position of an EU Counterterrorism Coordinator in 2005, only to be followed in 2016 with the position of an EU Commissioner for Security Union. A question therefore arises as to whether the EU needs two counterterrorism coordinators. This article addresses this question by utilizing Pierre Bourdieu’s concepts of field, capital, doxa, and habitus and argues that there is no apparent rationale for the coexistence of two EU Counterterrorism Coordinators with an overlapping mandate and minimal material, similar cultural and vastly disparate symbolic capital.