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

limiting national criminal law, it potentially expands Member States’ action in criminal
matters.
This relationship between Community law and national criminal law thus brought the
EC much closer to criminal law, even if the ECT remained silent in relation to criminal
matters. The pursuit of this goal was indirectly expanding the Community’s influence
into substantive and procedural criminal law of the Member States. The driving force
behind this legislative and judicial intervention was clearly the effectiveness of
Community law. National criminal law was thus increasingly being used as a tool to
regulate the single market and accomplish EC goals.
2.3. The shaping of organised crime as the motto for the European Union narrative on
crime
Pertinent to the narrative of protection and enforcement of EC policies via national penal
laws, the idea of the fight against organised crime as an underlying rationale for
intervention in EC criminal matters began to quietly emerge out of this expanding
dynamic of intervention. Step by step, organised crime began to provide a political and
legal rationale for integration in criminal law related matters, although this intervention
was only formally established after 1999 with the adoption of the TEU(A). In the
Declaration of Ministers of the Trevi Group issued in 1989 the idea of organised crime
as an all-embracing concept came across very clearly,
“… we note with growing concern the development of organised crime across frontiers.
Terrorism and professional criminals are increasingly adept at exploiting the limits of
competence of national agencies, the difference between legal systems which exist
between countries, and gaps in cooperation between respective services. Crimes such as
terrorism, drug trafficking, traffic in human beings, as well as the laundering of profits
obtained in these and other criminal activities, are now being planned and organised on
a transnational scale, taking advantages of all facilities offered by the development of
communications and international travel. ” 228
In view of these realities, Interior Ministers called for an increase in cooperation in
counter terrorism, illicit drug trafficking, traffic in human beings and other principal
aspects of organised crime including laundering of illicit profits, and called for an
improvement in exchanges and communications between national agencies. 229 Types of
228 Trevi Ministers, “Declaration of the Ministers of the Trevi Group”, supra note 156, para 3.
229 Ibid., para 3 and 4, 35-36.
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