Abstract
This article addresses supranational governance of EU criminal justice agencies from the perspective of the various agencies of policy and rulemaking who have contributed to the impressive developments in the field of EU criminal law. Taking as a working hypothesis the happenstance and haphazard character of this field of policy and law, it suggests that there is an absence of design. In the discussion the article proposes the Platonic analogy of the ‘ship of fools’ (Plato, Republic, Book VI) as an explanatory tool. The ship's captain is the guiding spirit of criminal law, but the crew of the ship, who have the power to take control, have diverse interests and ideas about how the ship should be taken to sea and navigated. The article addresses thematically and chronologically the development of EU criminal policy by means of this framework. Subsequently it discusses the extent to which the ‘ship of fools’ analogy is relevant to the development of EU criminal justice agencies, and to the emergence of a European Public Prosecutor. Underlying all this discussion is the uneasy sense that the true pilot of EU criminal law and policy has been displaced, in particular by ‘instrumental’ pilots of securitisation and effectiveness.
Highlights
The article here aims to better understand the landscape of policy and rule formation that is packaged conveniently as ‘European Public Prosecutor (EPPO): Council Regulation (EU) criminal law’, with a particular focus on EU criminal justiceHarding and Oberg agencies
Treaty amendments in Maastricht and a strong political commitment by the European Council in Tampere, The Hague and Stockholm have contributed to making EU criminal law a central field of EU policy
In instances where the supranational EU institutions have been the primary actors in shaping policy, e.g. in respect of the development of EU regulatory criminal law[128] and the rise of a European Public Prosecutor, the rationale employed has been ‘functional’ and ‘instrumental’
Summary
The article here aims to better understand the landscape of policy and rule formation that is packaged conveniently as ‘EU criminal law’, with a particular focus on EU criminal justice. Treaty amendments in Maastricht and a strong political commitment by the European Council in Tampere, The Hague and Stockholm have contributed to making EU criminal law a central field of EU policy This evolution culminated in the Lisbon Treaty, when EU criminal policy was (partly) integrated into the supranational Community decision-making framework.[9] But surveying this history of ‘EU action in criminal matters’, to what extent may this be described as criminal law in the traditional sense, rather than piggybacking on existing national criminal law and procedures? The conclusions summarize and reflect on the findings of the article
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