Based on the reading, Traditionally, criminal law was in the competence of national governments, not in the competence of the European Union. However, the EU has been moving into the realm of criminal law in recent years. What does EU criminal law look like now? What will it look like in the future, based on current trends?

 

Reading, 

However, the Court of Justice of the EU is building a European-wide common law through its decisions. In fact, the Court of Justice of the EU has got characteristics similar to an inquisitorial system in the sense that we have judges sitting in panels issuing written decisions. That's again partly because of the language barrier issue. But they issue laws that they see as binding precedent that lay out general rules of conduct. In fact, the Court of Justice of the EU really struggles to try to find a single rule that can apply to everyone. They'll look at the laws of national countries. They'll look at German law, French law, Italian law, and Irish law, Spanish law, and pick one of those rules and then make it the law of the whole union. In that sense, legal harmonization is very real and you could have a common law rule selected for everyone. That tended to be quite common actually, especially on issues involving due process because the common law systems often had more protective laws than civil law countries did there. Traditionally, criminal law was in the realm of national competency, not the EU's competency. Let's think about this. The treaties, the Maastricht treaty, Amsterdam, Niece and Lisbon layout what is the competence of the EU? What's the competence of the national governments and what's a shared competence? For instance, the EU has exclusive competence over customs, over foreign affairs and over the Euros monetary policy. National governments get no say in those things. In a lot of other fields, labor rights, agriculture environments, those types of things, there's shared competency between the EU and the national governments. Finally, there's some areas that were traditionally left to national governments, and criminal law tended to be one of them. However, many of these fields had become mixed, which blurs in civil law the distinction between public and private law. Again, common law didn't recognize that distinction between public and private law, but civil law countries traditionally have a distinction between public and private law. Think about employment law or labor law. Whether the government can negotiate with labor unions or how the government regulates labor unions. Those things are matters of public law traditionally. The collective bargaining agreements between businesses and their workers. Those things are matters of private law, but you can't have one without the other in labor law. Same with employment law. The individual employment contracts are matters of private law. When you sign an employment contract, that's a private law matter. But employment discrimination or whistleblower protections, those things are matters of public law. Employment and labor law really are mixtures of public and private law and the EU is driving the blending between public and private laws. That old civil law distinction between public and private law and a lot of ways is breaking down. Now, although the EU does not yet have a public prosecutor, although there is inferior legal authority to create one, eventually it will sit in Luxembourg. But Britain was one of the big obstacles to that. We'll see if this will accelerate without Britain's involvement. But there hasn't been an EU public prosecutor enforcing an EU criminal code yet. But the EU does have a lot of treaties and other conventions that required domestic governments to do certain things in the realm of criminal law. Governments are required, for instance, to cooperate an extradition, transnational organized crime, money laundering, human trafficking, counterfeiting across borders, cyber crime, terrorism. All EU member states are required to comply with those things because of these conventions. The EU can lay down minimum rules of criminal law in a lot of cases. There's also the European police agency that all European member states are a part of. The European police agency, Europol is basically the EU's Interpol component. It sits in the Hague and it coordinates police responses across boundaries. In the Lisbon Treaty, there is this new area of freedom, security and justice that creates a new EU competence that includes the realm of crime and justice matters. You will see in the next few decades, EU law expand into the realm of criminal law.