The Area of Freedom, Security and Justice

Course goals

After this course:

• The student has in-depth knowledge and understanding of the bases, general doctrines, essential case law, general principles, system and development of the Criminal Area of Freedom, Security and Justice. The students understand how EU regulating principles apply to EU competence in criminal matters, the relationship between the national, the EU and international legal orders as well as the role and powers of both EU institutions and the Member States in the decision-making process in the field of criminal law;
• By engaging in the written and oral phases of simulated negotiations, the student gains insight in the socio-economic and socio-political context of the Area of Freedom, Security and Justice and is able to discuss this context in the analysis of EU criminal law issues;
• The student is able to independently collect and assess scientific knowledge, to reflect on it critically and to systematically process and organise it by writing a position paper. The student is able to demonstrate an awareness of academic integrity in both the process and outcome;
• By engaging in simulated negotiations the student is able to develop and defend a substantiated position, based on a specific institutional mandate, in the ongoing public discussion. When doing so, the student is also able to analyse and assess the position papers from other students and to contrast their arguments against generally accepted knowledge of and insights into the topics in question;
• The student is able to communicate in writing as well as orally the knowledge, ideas, solutions and conclusions, as well as the arguments and motives on which these are based, in an understandable, structured, correct and convincing manner in English to an audience of specialists (peers);
• The student can reflect on his/her own professional functioning by preparing, as a group, a joint starting position for the negotiations, by jointly defining teams objectives for the negotations and by practising how to assume different institutional roles in the negotiation process.

Content

How do criminal justice systems and the EU’s Area of Freedom, Security and Justice (AFSJ) connect? In this course, we not only analyse the constitutional principles that guide the interaction between criminal justice and EU law, but we also give an overview of the main criminal policy axes of the EU. Amongst others, the programme will discuss issues concerning the historical development of the EU from a mere internal market oriented organisation towards an Area of Freedom, Security and Justice, issues concerning the EU competence in criminal law, the agenda setting in criminal policy and, last but not least, the challenges posed by the shared legal order in the defence of individual’s fundamental rights, as defined by the ECHR, national constitutional standards and the EU’s Charter of Fundamental Rights. This course is therefore organised around five main themes. Firstly, it will discuss the historical developments of the EU as an AFSJ and explain the extent to which criminal law has become more supranational over time. Some attention will be given to some of the tensions caused by the integration of EU criminal law into national legal orders. Secondly, the course will explain the main features of the decision-making process in the field. More than in other policy areas the process must accommodate conflicting EU and national concerns in order to build a shared criminal policy. A third theme will address the main principles governing cooperation in criminal matters between the EU and the Member States on the one hand, and between the Member States on the other. The attention will be put on the principle of mutual trust which works as foundation for the whole area, then classical principles such as supremacy and sincere cooperation will be discussed. This part will be the logical introduction to the fourth aspect of the course that will explain the main avenues of the EU criminal policy, i.e. harmonisation of national systems, mutual recognition and EU bodies and agencies. In this context, the protection of the individual’s fundamental rights becomes more than ever a focus of attention as will be explained in the last part of the course. The course will discuss, in particular the European Convention of Human Rights and the Charter of Fundamental rights of the EU and elaborate on possible conflicts between these instruments and between these instruments and the national sources of fundamental rights. In this respect, attention must be payed to the role of the Court of Justice of the EU. Through the prism of the preliminary proceedings, the CJEU has importantly contributed to the interpretation of fundamental rights in the AFSJ.