Preventing radicalisation in the European Union : how EU policy has evolved

Originating in national police and intelligence circles in the early 2000s, the concept of 'radicalisation' quickly attracted the attention of EU policymakers and became the preferred framework for analysing what it is that brings individuals and groups to terrorism. There is no uniform definition of radicalisation, even though the academics and institutions involved in tackling this phenomenon have come up with multiple interpretations. Experts tend to describe the radicalisation process as a set of stages and use models to illustrate how someone might go through these stages before becoming a terrorist. However, they disagree on the role of specific factors in this process, such as ideology. Some have pointed to the undesired consequences of policies targeting radicalisation and questioned the concept's suitability as a tool to advance our understanding of terrorism.