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

“The competent authorities in the executing State shall, as soon as possible and in any
case within 20 working days of receipt of the decision on supervision measures and
certificate, recognise the decision on supervision measures forwarded… and without
delay take all necessary measures for monitoring the supervision measures…”. 837
Regardless of these obligations, the executing State receives considerably more room to
act than in any other mutual recognition instruments thus far, in what is a clear slowing
down of the processes of mutual recognition. Indeed, dual criminality becomes fully
optional in relation to any criminality – i.e. even in relation to the listed 32 serious
criminal offence types. In fact, although the Framework Decision retains the same
format as all others adopted thus far – hence providing for a special regime for the listed
32 types of offences in case they are punishable by deprivation of liberty of at least three
years – it also states that,
“Member States may, for constitutional reasons… declare that they will not apply
paragraph 1 in respect to some or all offences referred to in that paragraph.” 838
Pre trial detention has for long been a thorny issue in many criminal justice systems,
both because of long detention periods and because of the disproportionate numbers of
non nationals in pre-trial detention. Detention periods in many countries can be very
long: although the average length of pre-trial detention in Member States is 5.5 months
this disguises the extremely long periods in countries such as, for example Latvia,
Greece or Hungary where the average is one year. 839 In fact, countries such as Latvia or
Spain stipulate that pre-trial detention can go up to 4 years, whilst Sweden does not have
a maximum period at all. 840 Furthermore, in EU Member States, there is a
disproportionately high rate of incarceration of non-nationals, many of whom are in pre-
837 Article 12, ibid..
838 Article 14 (4), ibid..
839 See Table 3.2 in Commission’s Staff Working Document accompanying docuemtnto the
Proposal for a Council Framework Decision on the European supervision order in pre-trial
procedures between Member States of the European Union, COM (2006)468 final, Impact
Assesment, Brussels, 29 August 2006, 10-11.
840 Fair Trials International Report, “Detained without trial: Fair Trials International’s response to
the European Commission’s Green Paper on detention”, October 2011, 28. In Sweden however,
if no action towards conditional release is taken within 14 days of detention a new remand
hearing is required, ibid.., 28.
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