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

offenders can choose the country with the most lenient laws to commit a crime; and
second, because different definitions of crime necessarily lead to different priorities and
policy responses, namely from a policing point of view, which was no longer desirable
in the European Union context. This was the case in the early nineties in relation to
terrorism, organised crime or even drug trafficking. 296
However, even if envisaged before and felt as necessary, harmonisation did not appear
to be an easy task at first. This was due to significant differences between Member
States' domestic legislation. Indeed, some studies into national laws suggested that
differences among them could eventually be too significant to allow for harmonisation.
An “Interim report on cooperation in the campaign against organised crime” by the
Working Party on International Organised Crime in 1994 and by the K4’s Steering
Group on Judicial Cooperation in criminal matters, for example, analysed the possibility
of common charges and increased judicial cooperation in relation to organised crime.
The Group found at that point in time that it would be difficult to have a concept of
common charges given the significant differences between the laws of the Member
States suggesting instead that judicial cooperation should be made easier. 297
Regardless of these difficulties, harmonisation did begin to take place. The focus of
harmonisation was thus on minimum elements constituent of crimes (this entailed the
EU’s provision of a definition containing the basic elements that should be criminalised
at the national level), on the call for the liability of legal persons in certain cases and on
the conditions that national penalties should fulfil. Through harmonisation, the EU
sought to ensure the criminalisation at the national level of a certain number of Eurocrimes
in a relatively homogeneous fashion. The offences at stake related to EC
financial interests, corruption of EC officials as well as private corruption, money
laundering and related behaviours, racism and xenophobia, drug trafficking, trafficking
in persons and human beings and organised crime.
More specifically, the Convention on the protection of EC financial interests, for
instance, proposed a common definition of fraud affecting the European Communities’
financial interests which covered fraud against both the EC’s expenditure and
296 N. Walker, “European Integration and European Policing: A Complex Relationship”, in M.
Anderson and M. Den Boer (eds) Policing across national boundaries (London: Pinter
Publications, 1994) 22, 26-36.
297 Working Party on International Organised Crime, “Draft interim report on cooperation in the
campaign against international organised crime”, Doc.10104/1/94, Brussels, 26 October 1994 and
Steering Group III (Judicial Cooperation in Criminal Matters), “Interim Report on cooperation in
the campaign against international organised crime”, Brussels, 4 November 1994.
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