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European Criminal Law and Justice deals with the European Union as a Criminal Justice actor.
Now for many that?s quite an unusual thought given that this was actually a commercial
union but it has grown into being a very important criminal justice cooperation forum. You could
see it as the other criminal justice side of freedom of movement of persons goods and
capital. Obviously with that have come new opportunities for criminals to move their
goods and their persons and their capital more easily.
A criminal justice system of sorts is evolving to deal with the negative sides of those freedoms
of movement provided by the European Union. It?s a very strange position because the European
Union is not a state, it doesn't have a constitution but the member states have now involved it
in activities which target rights of citizens which we would usually associate with a State.
So the European Criminal Law and Justice module deals deals with the European Union as a Criminal
Justice actor. We look at the criminal phenomena which have led to the EU becoming involved,
so transnational crime is on the one hand very important and the protection of the financial
interests of the European Union is another topic which we deal with. We also look not
only at the legal situation but at the institutional developments so we look at institutions in
detail like Europol or Eurojust, the criminal cooperation unit and we look at how they interact
with member state agencies to form this criminal justice arena. We then also look at certain
criminal phenomena to see how far we think it?s correct that they?re allocated to the
European Union level. So we look, for example, at corruption but we?ve looked at cyber-crime
in the past, we may look at terrorism in detail. That depends a little bit on the make-up of
the class and the interests of the class. We also look at the reform suggestions at
the moment, so the United Kingdom as a member state obviously sees the EU and particularly
its criminal justice powers very critically and we look at the opt-out discussion and
some of the reform discussions like the European public prosecutor in detail.
So reading is set prior to class, which students must complete in order to take part in the
class sensibly, the reading list also contains a number of questions to which students usually
prepare the answers in advance but then come together with an open mind to discuss them
with me and their colleagues.