The Future of EU Substantive Criminal Law

Abstract

When criminal law became one of the components of the Union’s objectives, the EU obtained explicit substantive criminal law competences. Minimum rules on substantive criminal law facilitate the principle of mutual recognition, allow for the approximation of sanctions and common definitions of certain offences, and make it possible to respond to global challenges. Criminal law could also have serious consequences for the persons involved. The EU legislator should therefore exercise caution when exercising its competences to approximate the substantive criminal law of its Member States. Criminalisation principles offer the legislator an argumentative framework, which can be used to determine whether criminalisation is legitimate and justified. This article aims to introduce a set of uniform set of criminalisation principles at the EU level.