Max Planck Institute for Foreign and International Criminal Law

Against the backdrop of the proposed potential European Public Prosecutor foreseen by article 86 of the Treaty of the Functioning of the EU as provided for by the Lisbon Treaty, the EuroNEEDS project is being undertaken to explore the need for criminal justice institutions and instruments at the EU level. Recent years have seen a number of mechanisms developed within the inter-governmental third pillar of the EU to assist national criminal justice agencies fighting crime above all within the Schengen area. Given the freedoms provided to citizens but also for the flow of goods and capital within the EU, territorially bound criminal justice systems face particularly challenges fighting and prosecuting trans-national crime. Furthermore the lack of criminal justice agencies to effectively protect its interests apparently leaves the bodies of the EU vulnerable to crime, in particular fraud against its financial interests. Considering, however, that instruments such as the European Arrest Warrant now provide criminal justice agencies with powerful tools in the fight against crime, criticism abounds that the fundamental rights protection usually associated with criminal justice is inadequately provided for because ad hoc solutions to some problems are quickly implemented rather than a systematic approach to all undertaken.

The EuroNEEDS project sets out to provide a clear picture of what challenges the European Area of Freedom, Security and Justice poses to criminal justice systems. Above all by interviewing relevant practitioners in 18 member states as well as in European institutions, the project is exploring which problems they face, whether the mechanisms developed to counter these within the third pillar are effective, whether solutions proposed such as the European Public Prosecutor are viable solutions or whether different mechanisms and/or institutions are necessary. By focussing also upon procedural rights issues and questions of defence participation, the study takes a comprehensive approach to stock-taking the current state and the future needs of criminal justice at the European level.

Co-funded by the Hercule programme of the European Commission, the study will submit a report to the Commission early in 2010 and its results will be published during the course of that year.

At a decisive point in time when the EU stands on the brink of being assigned a legal basis upon which to take actions deeply affecting the criminal justice systems of the member states but has failed to provide for the kind of Constitutional framework in which one would normally expect such developments to take place; as the EU is well on the way to becoming a significant criminal justice actor and yet is heavily criticised for the lack of attention paid to human rights in doing so, this project is being carried out at the MPI aiming to decisively influence the debate in this area.