ABSTRACT

The past 15 years have witnessed a remarkable rise of European Union (EU) criminal law as a distinct legal, policy and academic field. The proliferation of EU measures in the field, many of which were adopted in response to major security incidents including 9/11 and the London and Madrid bombings, have resulted in a legal landscape focused heavily on security, and with limited emphasis on the protection of human rights. The entry into force of the Treaty of Lisbon in 2009 had the potential to change this landscape in three ways: by the introduction of specific, high-level commitments by the EU to uphold human rights – most notably via the constitutionalization of the EU Charter of Fundamental Rights and the commitment for the Union to accede to the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR); by granting the EU, for the first time in the history of European integration, of express competence to legislate on human rights, by embarking on a minimum harmonization of Member State legislation in the field of criminal procedure, including the rights of the suspect and the accused in criminal proceedings; and by strengthening the institutional framework in the field of EU criminal law, through the normalization – and thus enhancement – of the powers of the European Commission and of the Court of Justice to monitor the implementation of EU criminal law by Member States. This chapter will examine the impact of the entry into force of the Treaty of Lisbon on human rights protection in the context of European integration in criminal matters. It will start by analysing the impact of the constitutionalization of the Charter of Fundamental Rights on EU criminal law; it will continue by explaining the application of the principle of mutual recognition in the field of criminal justice, and evaluate the place of human rights in a system which is largely based on a high level of trust between national authorities based on the presumption that the systems of all EU Member States are compliant with their human rights obligations save in exceptional circumstances. The chapter will continue by evaluating the impact of new EU legislation on defence rights on the operation of mutual recognition, and will highlight the transformative impact of not only these measures, but also of the enhanced monitoring powers of EU institutions, for the protection of human rights in the field of EU criminal justice after Lisbon.