In spring of 2014, the Court of Justice published two rulings that are remarkable for different reasons and share one common trait: both judgments fall short of expectations. One of the tasks of the Court of Justice is interpretation of EU legal acts by means of preliminary rulings. National judges may request the Court to clarify provisions of EU law or even the validity of an EU legal instrument. In the past decades, this has led to several landmark rulings that have shaped EU law.1 Through its jurisprudence, the Court has established a number of fundamental principles by giving elaborate... Read more

The steps forward of the European Communities or of the European Union have always been quite associated with the names of the cities where the crucial decisions − very often long prepared in advance in Brussels, Strasbourg or elsewhere − were presumed having been finally taken: Rome, Maastricht, Amsterdam, Nice, Lisbon… The same is true of the turning points in the field of Justice and Home Affairs after the entry into force, in November 1993, of the Treaty establishing the European Union (the Maastricht Treaty). Immediately after the entry into force of the Amsterdam Treaty, on 1st of May 1999,... Read more

When the Stockholm agenda was being negotiated in 2009, the negotiators faced the uncertainty that the Lisbon Treaty would never survive its initial failure of 2007 and thereby risked the same fate as the doomed Constitutional Treaty of 2005. Such a scenario would have ended the fast track to further EU integration in criminal law as a better route to pursue than the alternative, namely the Court’s case law. Five years after the successful entry into force of the Lisbon Treaty and the Stockholm Programme, and with all the legal possibilities in place to move forward with this EU project,... Read more

I. Introduction On 22 October 2013, the European Parliament and the Council adopted Directive 2013/48/EU on the right of access to a lawyer in criminal proceedings and in European Arrest Warrant (EAW) proceedings. The Directive also addresses the right for suspects and accused persons in criminal proceedings, and for persons subject to EAW proceedings, to have a third party informed upon deprivation of liberty and the right to communicate with third persons and with consular authorities while deprived of liberty.1 The part of the Directive regarding the right of access to a lawyer is the core measure of the roadmap... Read more

The Lisbon Treaties sought to address several of the criminal policy shortcomings that I have mentioned in the editorial of this number of eucrim. Whether they have been adequately addressed is still too early to assess, but some of the experiences show that we are on the right track. In particular, the use of QMV (Qualified Majority Voting) and co-decision under the ordinary legislative procedure have permitted less tortuous compromises to be made. It should also be said that the Lisbon Treaties also brought some new challenges to the development of criminal policy in the European Union. Contrary to what... Read more