This article aims to address the way that the fight against football crowd disorder has been regulated at the European level. The analysis of the key counter-hooliganism measures introduced by the Council of the EU since the late 1990s, in line with the provisions of the 1985 European Convention, uncovers the impact of the risk-based mindset and the growing politicisation of security issues ona regulatory process that has led to the institutionalisation of the control and punishment of deviant behaviour. It is argued that this institutionalisation is facilitated by the absence of a proper legal definition of football hooliganism, and that the growing importance of suspicion as one of the grounds of law enforcement action entails serious infringement of the civil rights and liberties of football supporters because it jeopardises and even negates certain legal principles that lie beneath these rights.