European and international criminal law views : Globalized crime and criminal justice
In a worldwide society, criminal law and criminal justice are no longer the unique privilege and obligation of sovereign governments. Crime and other challenges to security increasingly have an international dimension and correspondingly impact governments collectively, whether it on a regional or global basis. In order to handle international, cross-border crime and the most severe types of misbehavior that affect the international community as a whole, new legal frameworks have evolved that profoundly shape and impact criminal justice. In the European context, the European Union has ever since the entrance into effect of the Maastricht Treaty acquired more and more power with respect to criminal law. The Treaty of Lisbon enhanced the Union’s competencies and also brought far reaching institutional and constitutional reforms, helping to the ongoing creation of a European criminal justice system.
With regard to international wrongdoing which affects significant international interests and which runs counter to commonly shared values of civilized nations, the establishment of several ad hoc tribunals as well as the creation of a permanent International Criminal Court (ICC) has given rise to an international criminal law regime.
Both European and International Criminal Law, are relatively young branches of law and have grown in an incoherent and fragmented way. While the purpose, institutional framework, structure and underlying logic of the two legal regimes vary greatly, the two systems also share communalities and confront comparable issues owing to the fact, that both have to handle identical parts and components of criminal justice. For instance, in both domains of law, via legislation and case law a full system of substantive and procedural norms has been formed. While the European legislature has introduced a number of so-called Euro crimes, the essential offenses of International Criminal Law are codified in many sources, such as the ICC statute. A fundamental distinction is that EU law allows for an indirect enforcement mechanism through the Member States, but international criminal law is founded on the complementarity of national and international enforcement. However, both have since formed a Public Prosecution office and have evolved a number of defence rights, based on larger basic human rights requirements.
Next to concerns of substantive, respectively procedural criminal law, legal help and judicial collaboration are also key features in both legal systems.
This conference intends to analyze and critically examine the advances in European Criminal Law and International Criminal Law. The conference aims out to evaluate differences and similarities with relation to a number of various facets of criminal justice in a worldwide environment. It tries to zoom in on the similarities and contrasts of both supranational legal regimes and to explore a number of problems extending from the prosecution of significant international crimes, to issues of substantive and procedural criminal law and cooperation in criminal proceedings. The conference intends to bring together professionals from academics and practitioners from both European as well as international criminal law to debate issues and possibilities of today.