The European security and justice legislator after the Lisbon Treaty: progress toward the criminal judicial cooperation in the EU

Abstract

The European approximation and/or harmonization in both criminal matters and criminal procedure legislation got started not so long ago: As a matter of fact, until recently, it all seemed a voluntary exercise of wishful thinking, in as much as it was making on a field so far preserved within the traditional realm of States’ sovereignty. The final incorporation of criminal law and criminal judicial cooperation to the sphere of European policy is an outstanding example of the european construction towards areas and competences that had been historically monopolised by national legislators. Indeed, the limitations in this matter of the intergovernmental cooperation in the Third Pillar that emerged with the entry into force of the TEU in 1992, after its conversion into the Area of Freedom, Security and Justice in the subsequent Treaty Amsterdam 1999, have been just recently overcome. Accordingly, some most important Framework Decisions (FD) meaning significant steps in the area of judicial cooperation were taken, through the implementation of specific measures on European security against serious cross-border crime by means of judicial cooperation in criminal matters. The conversion of the Area of Freedom, Security and Justice is a genuine European policy subject to the ordinary legislative procedure (with some specialties) after the Treaty of Lisbon in 2009, together with the projection of the Charter of Fundamental Rights of the EU (i.e., of the principles of legal certainty, of «proportionality» and «necessity» and/or «subsidiarity» in the articulation and application of criminal law) are now, in fact, the most visible expression of the EU’s political ambition and constitutional dimension.