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

identified in the TEU(M) It was seen in Chapter 1 how concerns over terrorism, illegal
immigration, organised crime and related criminality were present throughout the main
political initiatives aimed at cooperation in a rather entangled framework. The TEU(M)
offered a clearer and more transparent framework for intervention in these domains and
consequently discourses became clearer from a political as well as a legal point of view.
In particular, Article K.1 TEU(M) mentioned cooperation in areas of common interest,
namely judicial cooperation in criminal matters and police cooperation in relation to
terrorism, drug trafficking and other forms on international crime. Yet this TEU(M)
provision was vague and some previous concerns over transparency and clarity
continued to be voiced. The most significant evidence of this ambiguity is the fact that
organised crime, despite not being mentioned in Article K.1, became the allencompassing
rationale for the EU’s intervention in criminal matters. This was seen
throughout political declarations and preambles and bodies of joint actions. Furthermore,
besides organised crime, the protection of EC interests and policies was of no negligible
importance during the Maastricht era but there was also no clear mandate for
intervention via criminal law in this domain. In fact, the ECT(M) did not contain any
provision enabling the EC to adopt criminal law related measures and the TEU(M) did
not make a particular reference in that regard either. Thus, the following section will
further explore the narratives and rationales that were embedding the first seeds of
criminal law in the EU from a political and legal perspective.
3. The scope of intervention: the emergence of Euro-rationales and Euro-offences
The lack of comprehensive guidance by the TEU(M) regarding criminal matters allowed
for greater flexibility in the interpretation of EU’s competencies by the Council. Indeed,
as seen earlier, Article K.1 limited itself to defining “areas of common interest” to
Member States, mentioning domains such as judicial cooperation in criminal matters and
police cooperation in matters of terrorism, unlawful drug trafficking and other serious
forms of international crime, giving no further details in relation to any of these areas
nor in relation to the very general concepts of “internationality” and “seriousness”.
Furthermore, none of the concepts were explained by other provisions of the TEU(M)
nor addressed in the measures adopted, making them difficult to pin down. The
delimitation of these ideas became thus very difficult and the result was that such a
broad wording of the law allowed for an ambitious understanding of the domains in
which the EU could intervene in and of the forms that such an intervention could have,
as was shown by the number of measures and domains in which intervention was
sought.
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