THE NEED AND POSSIBILITIES OF HARMONISATION IN CRIMINAL LAW MATTERS IN THE EU

##plugins.themes.bootstrap3.article.sidebar##

PDF
Published Oct 1, 2013

##plugins.themes.bootstrap3.article.main##

Mantas Pakamanis
Mykolas Romeris University

Abstract

EU Member States must recognize decisions stemming from the national law of other Member States. Citizens in the other Member States are not in the position to know how other national criminal law systems have developed. Agreeing on the procedure to recognize national decisions with the application of the mutual recognition principle, rather than substantive rules in the field of criminal law reflects a legitimacy and democratic deficit. In addition, the “extraterritorial” reach of national criminal law decisions poses significant challenges to the position of the individual in legal order. Besides, the existing legal diversity constitutes a “weapon” in the hands of criminals, as
they may take advantage of the heterogeneity of the systems and of those they identify as less effective. The Treaty of Lisbon introduced changes, which regards criminal law harmonisation. Harmonisation involves a set of concrete EUwide standards which would be negotiated and agreed by the EU institutions. This article explores the current constitutional concerns of the application of the principle of mutual recognition in criminal law and seeks to indicate the need and possibilities to use harmonisation in the development of EU criminal law.

##plugins.themes.bootstrap3.article.details##

Issue
No. 10 (2013): Public Security and Public Order (10)
Section
Articles

Authorship Responsibility and Authors' Statements

The authors must submit the Author's Guarantee Form, declaring that the article submitted to Public Security and Public Order is an original work and has neither been published nor is under consideration for publication elsewhere. More so, the work has been carried out by the authors and the article does not contravene any existing copyright or any other third party rights. The AUTHOR'S GUARANTEE FORM could be found HERE

Authors contributing to Public Security and Public Order agree to publish their articles allowing third parties to share their work (copy, distribute, transmit) and to adapt it with a condition of proper referencing; the authors contributing agree to transfer all copyright ownership of the manuscript to the Public Security and Public Order.