Herlin-Karnell, Ester --- "Between flexibility and disintegration in EU criminal law" [2017] ELECD 402; in De Witte, Bruno; Ott, Andrea; Vos, Ellen (eds), "Between Flexibility and Disintegration" (Edward Elgar Publishing, 2017) 384

Book Title: Between Flexibility and Disintegration

Editor(s): De Witte, Bruno; Ott, Andrea; Vos, Ellen

Publisher: Edward Elgar Publishing

ISBN (hard cover): 9781783475889

Section: Chapter 15

Section Title: Between flexibility and disintegration in EU criminal law

Author(s): Herlin-Karnell, Ester

Number of pages: 21

Abstract/Description:

The idea of flexibility seems to provide an attractive European model to aim for, not least to avoid the accusation of a ‘one-size’ fits all approach to the highly complicated project of an EU of 28 Member States. Yet, as this chapter will try to show, as much as the notion of flexibility seems to be an attractive concept, it is also a rather vague one. Specifically, this chapter sets out to explore the notion of ‘flexible’ integration in the concrete area of EU criminal law. The phenomenon of EU criminal law is traditionally meant to capture cross-border criminality where the EU is taking multilateral Member State action to combat particularly serious criminality such as terrorism, organized crime and cyber-crime related criminality. However, in recent years, the EU has acquired a more freestanding competence to legislate on criminal law proper. With the Lisbon Treaty, the EU gained certain EU competences in criminal law, either when there is a cross-border dimension or if harmonization of criminal law at the EU level would be needed for the effective implementation of an area that has already been subject to harmonization (Article 83 TFEU). Despite its novel nature in an EU context, or perhaps exactly because of it, criminal law offers a good example of limits, and varied meaning, to the concept of flexibility as a tool for European integration.