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

significantly broader range of crimes, and by placing more pressure for change upon
more lenient legal orders than upon more severe ones.
Chapter 4 will shed light on the harmonisation of national criminal law. The Treaty of
Amsterdam had envisaged harmonisation of the minimum elements constituent of
criminal offences and penalties in relation to drug trafficking, terrorism and organised
crime. 79 The chapter will highlight how the Treaty’s provisions were interpreted
extensively and secondary legislation adopted across a wide range of Euro-crimes.
Furthermore, the intensity of the EU’s criminalisation of these offences was significant.
This will be shown through the example of organised crime, which has been a central
rationale for criminalisation by the EU. 80 This is particularly evident in the Framework
Decision on fighting organised crime, 81 which called for the criminalisation of one or
both offences of membership in a criminal organisation or the agreement to actively take
part in the execution of offences related to the activities of the criminal organisation.
This dual option given by the Framework Decision was a result of the political
incapacity to agree on one single approach to criminalisation. More significant to this
chapter’s argument on the intensity of EU’s criminalisation, was the wide definition of
what a criminal organisation is. It will be shown how the definition agreed upon is very
broad definition in comparison with both academic commentaries on the phenomena of
organised crime and with examples of legislation at the national and international level
which—even in their broadest examples—are more limited in scope than the EU’s. The
latter’s definition is in fact, broad and flexible enough to cover a wide range of
criminality, from Mafia-like associations, business related criminal groups, small groups
of pick-pocketers, large illegal drug and human trafficking networks, national or
transnational, more or less structured, among many others. The EU’s definition is able to
cover not only traditional organised crime groups but also looser structures and networks
of criminals which rather than being organised crime groups can also be groups that
commit crimes that are organised or, said differently, groups that can organise
themselves to commit certain crimes but which do not amount to what was usually
thought to be organised crime in the strictest sense.
In fact, it will further be argued in this chapter that this broad definition of offences was
seen in a large number of examples and, in general, definitions of crimes proposed by
the EU legislator were very broad. This required some Member States to widen the
scope of existing offences or introduce new criminal offences altogether. 82 Furthermore,
79 Chapter 4, section 1.
80 Chapter 4, section 2.
81 Framework Decision 2008/841/JHA of 24 October 2008 on the fight against organised crime,
OJ L 300/42 [2008].
82 Chapter 4, section 2.1.
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