EU law and criminal law - the legal basis

Abstract

The European Union started as a common market, and following the Maastricht Treaty in 1993, it evolved into an economic union. As an economic union, one would not expect that the legal basis ventures into other fields besides the economic field. However, the Maastricht Treaty went beyond the economic concepts that were originally found in the European Economic Community (EEC) Treaty. In fact, the Treaty on European Union (TEU) encompassed a three-pillar structure with different modes of governance. While the traditional community pillar was supranational in nature, the second pillar, the common and foreign security policy (CFSP) and the third pillar, justice and home affairs (JHA), were mainly intergovernmental, varying in different degrees from each other. European criminal law can mainly trace its modern origins to the third pillar.