The judicial control of the activities of prosecutors within criminal proceedings constitutes an important issue in every legal system. It is particularly important at the pre-trail stage of proceedings, when the prosecutor is responsible for many actions, and of lesser importance at the judicial stage of the proceedings, when the court takes over. However, the issue of judicial control of prosecutors’ actions may warrant special attention once the European Public Prosecutor’s Office (hereinafter the “EPPO”) is established.1 When it comes to prosecutorial actions, the EPPO will be subjected to the control of the national courts.2 Therefore, it will be necessary... Read more

I. Introduction About ten years ago, the Netherlands changed its extradition procedure governing the relationship with other EU Member States. Since 11 May 2004, extradition with other EU Member States is regulated under the Surrender of Persons Act (Overleveringswet).1 Since that date, requests for extradition by other EU Member States that have implemented the Framework Decision on the European Arrest Warrant2 fall under a specific structure that is different from the classic structure laid down in the Dutch Extradition Act (Uitleveringswet).3 Under this classic structure, a request for extradition is dealt with by the Dutch Minister of Safety and Justice.... Read more

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