EU Criminal Law is perhaps the fastest-growing area of EU law. It is also one of the most contested fields of EU action, covering measures which have a significant impact on the protection of fundamental rights and the relationship between the individual and the State, while at the same time presenting a challenge to State sovereignty in the field and potentially reconfiguring significantly the relationship between Member States and the EU. The book will examine in detail the main aspects of EU criminal law, in the light of these constitutional challenges. These include: the history and institutions of EU criminal law (including the evolution of the third pillar and its relationship with EC law); harmonisation in criminal law and procedure (with emphasis on competence questions); mutual recognition in criminal matters (including the operation of the European Arrest Warrant) and accompanying measures; action by EU bodies facilitating police and judicial co-operation in criminal matters (such as Europol, Eurojust and OLAF); the collection and exchange of personal data, in particular via EU databases and co-operation between law enforcement authorities; and the external dimension of EU action in criminal matters, including EU-US counter-terrorism co-operation. The analysis is forward-looking, taking into account the potential impact of the Lisbon Treaty on EU criminal law.

This monograph is the first comprehensive analysis of the impact of the entry into force of the Treaty of Lisbon on EU criminal law. By focusing on key areas of criminal law and procedure, the book assesses the extent to which the entry into force of the Lisbon Treaty has transformed European criminal justice and evaluates the impact of post-Lisbon legislation on national criminal justice systems. The monograph examines the constitutionalisation of EU criminal law after Lisbon, by focusing on the impact of institutional and constitutional developments in the field including the influence of the EU Charter of Fundamental Rights on EU criminal law. The analysis covers aspects of criminal justice ranging from criminalisation to judicial co-operation to prosecution to the enforcement of sanctions. The book contains a detailed analysis and evaluation of the powers of the Union to harmonise substantive criminal law and the influence of European Union law on national substantive criminal law; of the evolution of the Europeanisation of prosecution from horizontal co-operation between national criminal justice to forms of vertical integration in the field of prosecution as embodied in the evolution of Eurojust and the establishment of a European Public Prosecutor's Office; of the operation of the principle of mutual recognition (by focusing in particular on the European Arrest Warrant System) and its impact on the relationship between mutual trust and fundamental rights; of EU legislation in the field on criminal procedure, including legislation on the rights of the defendant and the victim; of the relationship between EU criminal law and citizenship of the Union; and of the evolution of an EU model of preventive justice, as exemplified by the proliferation of measures on terrorist sanctions. Throughout the book, the questions of the UK participation in Europe's area of criminal justice and the feasibility of a Europe à-la-carte in EU criminal law are examined. The book concludes by highlighting the possibilities that the Lisbon Treaty opens for the development of a new paradigm of European criminal justice, which places the individual (and not the state), and the protection of fundamental rights (and not security) at its core.

The last decades have witnessed a growing emphasis on the relationship between environmental law and criminal law. Legislation aimed at tackling environmental crime has been adopted at national, EU, and international level and has been gradually evolving over time. These developments notwithstanding, the current legal framework faces a number of challenges in tackling the largely inter-related phenomena of transnational, organised and economic environmental crime. This study by Valsamis Mitsilegas and Fabio Giuffrida addresses these challenges by focusing on the role of the European Union- and more specifically its criminal justice agencies (Europol and Eurojust)- in tackling transnational environmental crime. The study analyses the role of Eurojust and Europol in supporting and coordinating the competent national authorities dealing with investigations and/or prosecutions on transnational environmental crime, and it shows that, for the time being, the full potential of these agencies is not adequately exploited with regard to fighting this phenomenon effectively

Policing Humanitarianism examines the ways in which European Union policies aimed at countering the phenomenon of migrant smuggling affects civil society actors' activities in the provision of humanitarian assistance, access to rights for irregular immigrants and asylum seekers. It explores the effects of EU policies, laws and agencies' operations in anti-migrant smuggling actions and their implementation in the following EU Member States: Italy, Greece, Hungary and the UK.The book critically studies policies designed and implemented since 2015, during the so called 'European refugee humanitarian crisis'. Building upon the existing academic literature covering the 'criminalisation of migration ' in the EU, the book examines the wider set of punitive, coercive or control-oriented dynamics affecting Civil Society Actors' work and activities through the lens of the notion of ' policing the mobility society'. This concept seeks to provide a framework of analysis that allows for an examination of a wider set of practices, mechanisms and tools driven by a logic of policing in the context of the EU Schengen border framework: those which affect not only people, who move (qualified as third-country nationals for the purposes of EU law), but also people who mobilise in a rights-claiming capacity on behalf of and with immigrants and asylum-seekers.

Immigration control in the West has increasingly focused on preventing migrants from reaching the external border and the territory of states. This book provides an in-depth analysis of the evolving preventive immigration control system and highlights the many ways in which contemporary border controls undermine the rule of law. By examining border control practices at the state and European levels (including by EU agencies and through the use of AI), the book explores how these measures affect the rule of law across different areas, including extraterritorial immigration control, control of the external borders and the digitalization of border control. This is an essential resource, presenting a comprehensive and nuanced understanding of today’s border management challenges.

This is the first monograph providing a comprehensive legal analysis of the criminalisation of migration in Europe. The book puts forward a definition of the criminalisation of migration as the three-fold process whereby migration management takes place via the adoption of substantive criminal law, via recourse to traditional criminal law enforcement mechanisms including surveillance and detention, and via the development of mechanisms of prevention and pre-emption. The book provides a typology of criminalisation of migration, structured on the basis of the three stages of the migrant experience: criminalisation before entry (examining criminalisation in the context of extraterritorial immigration control, delegation and privatisation in immigration control and the securitisation of migration); criminalisation during stay (examining how substantive criminal law is used to regulate migration in the territory); and criminalisation after entry and towards removal (examining efforts to exclude and remove migrants from the territory and jurisdiction of EU Member States and criminalisation through detention). The analysis focuses on the impact of the criminalisation of migration on human rights and the rule of law, and it highlights how European Union law (through the application of both the EU Charter of Fundamental Rights and general principles of EU law) and ECHR law may contribute towards achieving decriminalisation of migration in Europe.

In the post-Cold War period new security threats have arisen in Western Europe. Among these, organized crime and illegal immigration are acknowledged to represent significant security challenges. The EU and Internal Security analyzes the nature of these challenges and investigates how the EU has been evolving to counter them. Written by experts in the fields of political science and law, this book addresses a hitherto neglected area of study.

The Legal Regulation of Environmental Crime - The International and European Dimension provides a comprehensive analysis of the international and EU legal regimes for tackling environmental crime. The book includes an in-depth analysis of the major international conventions as they relate to the regulation of environmental crime (CITES, Basel, MARPOL) and provides a holistic overview of the evolution and content of EU law in the field of environmental crime, covering substantive criminal law harmonisation, judicial cooperation and the role of EU criminal justice bodies and agencies (Europol, Eurojust and the EPPO) in fighting environmental crime. Further, the book addresses key recent policy and legislative developments in the field and offers a timely contribution to legal reform in view of the publication of new proposals on legislation on environmental crime at EU level.

The past fifteen years witnessed the emergence globally of a plethora of legislative measures aimed at countering money laundering. These developments have been inextricably linked with the growing international focus on newly perceived and/or prioritised global security threats such as organised crime and terrorism ' with money laundering counter-measures deemed essential to counter these threats. Taking these developments into account, this book examines in detail the evolution and content of money laundering counter-measures in the European Union. These measures constitute a new paradigm of security governance, achieved through three principal methods: criminalisation, consisting in the emergence of new criminal offences; responsibilisation, consisting in the mobilisation of the private sector to co-operate with the authorities in the fight against money laundering; and the emphasis on the administration of knowledge, through the establishment of new institutions, the financial intelligence units, with extensive powers to administer a wide range of information provided by the private sector. This paradigm may pose significant challenges to fundamental legal principles and to well-established social structures and the book attempts to address this balance. This up-to-date analysis includes the provisions of the new EU money laundering Directive which was formally adopted in December 2001.

This study examines the challenges to European law posed by third-country access to data held by private companies for purposes of law-enforcement investigations in criminal proceedings. The proliferation of electronic communications is putting cloud-computing companies under severe strain from multiple demands from the authorities to acquire access to such data. A key challenge for the EU emerges when third-country authorities request access to data held by private companies under EU jurisdiction outside pre-established channels of cooperation, in particular outside Mutual Legal Assistance (MLA) treaties. The EU concluded an MLA agreement with the United States in 2003, which sets the rules and procedures for lawful and legitimate access to evidence. A key distinguishing feature of the MLA-led process is that any request for access to data is "mediated" by or requires the consent of the state authority to whom the request is submitted as well as scrutiny by an independent judicial authority. Special focus is given to practical issues emerging in EU-US relations covering mutual legal assistance and evidence-gathering for law enforcement purposes in criminal proceedings. The fundamental question guiding this enquiry is how best to ensure that the rule of law and trust-based methods are respected in these proceedings. The authors carried out a detailed survey of the main EU legal instruments and their standards, underlining their direct relevance for assessing the lawfulness and legitimacy of access to data. They then outline three possible scenarios for the future and put forward a set of policy recommendations for addressing these challenges.