The evolution of European Union criminal law (1957-2012)

financial interests in order to guarantee an effective fight against organised crime across
the European Union. 370
This link, as portrayed in the Action Plan on organised crime, was also symbolic of the
growing intertwine between financial criminality and organised crime. Indeed, authors
had been drawing attention to the growing commonalities between business/financial
and organised criminality. Ruggiero, for example, pointed out that white-collar criminals
and organised crime have many commonalities: they use and need similar skills and
share common values. 371 In a similar line of reasoning, Levi had observed a
“growing involvement of professional and organized criminals in sophisticated fraud,
and the increasing use of financial institutions to launder vast quantities of money from
fraud.” 372
This intertwine was not only seen at national level but also at the EC level. In relation to
the latter, Quirke noted that fraud against the EC budget could be perpetrated both by the
‘organised fraudster’ and entrepreneurs who resort to fraud as a means of supporting
failing enterprises or companies in financial difficulties. 373
4. The idea of Euro-crime
It has been argued thus far that the Council adopted legal measures in considerably more
domains than the ones specifically mentioned in the TEU(M), hence taking a broad
approach to the competencies stipulated by the Treaty, tending to read these in a fluid,
loose manner which permitted its intervention in a diverse range of crimes. It was also
seen though how the EU’s claim in criminal law related matters was complementary of
national claims yet limited in its scope. In this sense, it will be further argued that the
EU focused mostly on a specific type of criminality – Euro-crime. 374 This idea of Euro-
370 Action Plan to combat organized crime adopted by the Council on 28 April 1997, OJ C 251/1
[1997].
371 V. Ruggiero, Organised and Corporate Crime in Europe: Offers that can’t be refused
(Aldershot: Dartmouth, 1996) 1-24.
372 M. Levi, Regulating Fraud - White-Collar Crime and the Criminal Process (London:
Tavistock, 1987) 15.
373 B. Quirke, “Fraud against European Public Funds”, supra note 362, 173.
374
Other authors have already referred to the concept of Euro-crime to describe crimes that the
EU requires Member State to criminalise and intervene upon, although not developing it from a
substantive perspective. Anderson et al., for example, refer to Euro-crime as a “diverse range of
criminal activities that have transnational characteristics and tendencies, but that are still
defined in the terms of national criminal laws.” At another point in the same book, the same
authors argue that “The term Euro-crime, occasionally used in law enforcement circles, is not yet
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