EU Criminal Law and Police Cooperation

Abstract

EU Justice and Home Affairs (JHA) law has been subject to a complex institutional evolution, culminating in the application (to a large degree) of the ‘Community’ approach to decision-making, legal instruments, and jurisdiction of the Court of Justice with the entry into force of the Treaty of Lisbon. The trade-off for this evolution has been (as with the creation of monetary union) an opt-out for those Member States with misgivings about applying a supranational institutional framework to this area. The evolution of EU policy in relation to criminal law and police cooperation has been less dramatic, although it is clear that to date, different models have been followed in different areas of JHA law (visas/borders, asylum, irregular immigration, legal immigration, and criminal law), with some degree of evolution in the models followed, particularly as regards asylum and legal migration. In particular, there are interesting points of comparison between this area and some of the principles underlying the development of the internal market. This chapter considers the evolution of EU law in temporal terms. This is followed by consideration of the evolution of policy concerning criminal law and cooperation and analysis of the role of the CJEU in this area.