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

Interior to their own governments, and there is no need for the body as a whole to be
thought of as responsible to any organisation.” 237
Along the same lines, Walker also noted that
“For all the political salience of its areas of interest, Trevi was no more than a forum for
policy discussion and information exchange, one that operated in the shadow of the
supranational legal structure.” 238
Whilst the issue of the lack of accountability was left untouched, small improvements
resulting from theses criticisms of Trevi and Trevi-like structures began to be made.
Steps towards more transparency, for example, were taken and the former secretive
nature of Trevi began to be abandoned. Indeed, after 1985, several documents of the
Trevi Ministers, of European Councils of the Justice and Home Affairs meetings and of
the work of several Groups began to be released to the public. This was important given
the negativity around the secrecy of Trevi on the part of national authorities and
academics alike. Indeed, as mentioned earlier, the activities of Trevi before 1986 are
difficult to pin down, as there are very few documents available from the work of the
group during those years, highlighting the secret nature for which Trevi came under
criticism. Bunyan, for example, notes how between 1976 and 1993 the Trevi Group
worked in secret without accountability and how much of the information available
today especially in reference to the period before 1986 only surfaced in 1993. 239
Hence, the first document to be released was the “Declaration of the Belgium
Presidency” issued in 1987 by the Trevi Group Ministers with the single market in
mind. 240 Subsequently, the Palma document, drawing the structures to be created under
the TEU(M), was adopted in 1989. 241 In the same year the Ministers of the Trevi Group
issued a Declaration to give wider publicity to the measures the Ministers of Interior and
Justice were seeking to develop and in 1990 the Trevi 92 Group drafted the Programme
237 Ibid.,162-163.
238 N. Walker, “The pattern of Transnational Policing”, in T. Newburn (ed) Handbook of Policing
(Devon: Willan Publishing, 2008, 2nd Edition) 119, 126.
239 T. Bunyan, Key Texts in Justice and Home Affairs, supra note 141, 33. Furthermore, the
scarcity of data on Trevi was a concern also shared by national authorities, namely by the House
of Commons as mentioned earlier in this section, House of Commons, “Practical Police
Cooperation in the European Community”, supra note 143, para 62, xxiii.
240 Declaration of the Belgium Presidency”, supra note 177.
241 Coordinators’ Group, “The Palma Document” Free Movement of Persons, A Report to the
European Council by the Coordinators’ Group, supra note 175.
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