On 3 April 2014, Directive 2014/41/EU regarding the European investigation order in criminal matters was finally approved. This instrument seeks to overcome the present fragmentary regulation on the gathering and transfer of cross-border evidence and improve the efficiency of the international judicial cooperation among the Member States. This article analyses the scope, content, and requirements of the European investigation order in order to make an assessment of this Directive from the point of view of the protection of the fundamental rights envisaged in Article 48 of the European Charter of Fundamental Rights, and, in particular, the right of defence in transnational criminal proceedings.

European integration in the field of security and criminal law has been largely based on the establishment of mechanisms of inter-state cooperation. Inter-state cooperation has both an internal and an external dimension. The internal dimension consists of the establishment of mechanisms of inter-state co-operation via the application of the principle of mutual recog-nition in the field of criminal law, ensuring that cooperation takes place on the basis of limited formality, automaticity, and speed. The external dimension consists of the establishment of cooperation mechanisms, most notably at the level of trans-atlantic counter-terrorism cooperation, ensuring the transfer of a wide range of personal data from the European Union to the United States. At both levels of cooperation, mutual trust is central. Cooperation mechanisms are based on mutual trust based on presumptions of compliance of the parties with co-operation arrangements on fundamental rights. However, this model of cooperation based on presumed trust is … Read more

It is certainly true that the juridical system on the protection of human rights in Europe is rather complex. This is for two main reasons; firstly, the Charter serves as a clear legal basis for the CJEU to rule on fundamental rights issues and, second-ly, the EU’s intensive legislative activity in criminal matters has produced a great amount of cases that most often impinge upon sensitive human rights issues. This has necessarily re-sulted in the CJEU dwelling on what has so far been an ex-clusive domain of the ECtHR and national courts. Against this background, the current article highlights issues with respect to the sharing of competence over fundamental rights by the two courts.

I. Preliminary Remarks Of the most significant innovations of the Treaty of Lisbon, one must refer to the conferral to the EU of a competence in criminal matters,1 according to which the national legislator, in some cases, is under the obligation to adopt criminal provisions implementing measures regulating criminalization decided at the supranational level. Indeed, according to Art. 83 TFEU, the EU legislative bodies – European Parliament and Council in co-decision − “establish, by means of directives adopted in accordance with the ordinary legislative procedure, minimum rules concerning the definition of criminal offences and sanctions.” Such a competence is conferred… Read more

Judgments rendered in absentia are at the core of the ordre public discussion as has shown the “Melloni case.” The issue has high practical relevance as a possible barrier to judicial cooperation in criminal matters. The following article investigates the solutions that have been found in European extradition law. In particular, it examines whether the new Article 4a of the Framework Decision on the European Arrest Warrant (introduced by Framework Decision 2009/299/JHA “on trials in absentia”) indeed meets – as many critics doubt – the standards of the European Convention on Human Rights and the ECtHR’s case law on the accused’s right to be present at his/her trial. The problem has come to the fore since Germany is currently in the process of implementing the 2009 Framework Decision. The article concludes that the new provision regarding the European Union’s extradition scheme can be “brought in line” via the means of … Read more