http://www.ipred.org/MainPage Introduction http://www.ipred.org/analysis Analysis http://www.ipred.org/howto How To http://www.ipred.org/factsheet Fact sheet http://www.ipred.org/backdoor Backdoor

European criminal law by the back door

A Commission operation will make European criminal law unstoppable.

A recent European Court of Justice judgment (C-176/03) opens the possibility for the European Commission and Parliament to make directives containing criminal measures together, without the member states having a veto.

The Commission can only make directives with criminal measures together with the European Parliament if both the objective of the Community and the measures are essential.

After case C 176/03 the Commission retracted pending framework decisions (member states have a veto), stating that this route is no longer available. This is nonsense, as [http://www.ipred.org/MainPage IPRED 2] shows. The IPRED 2 measures are not essential, IPRED 2 should never have become a codecision directive (member states do not have a veto).

But there is more. "As a result of the Court´s judgment the framework decisions in annex are entirely or partly incorrect, since all or some of their provisions were adopted on the wrong legal basis." ![1]

This remains to be seen.

If these framework decisions are "repaired", while the measures are not essential, precedents are created. The Commission can say: we solved this with a codecision directive, so this needs a codecision directive too.

A door opened a bit by the ECJ, is kicked open by the Commission.

It was already highly questionable that a Community institution (ECJ) gave the Community the right to make criminal laws, the member states never gave it to the Community. The Commission contemplates a further assault on the sovereignty of the member states.

Every proposal for "regularisation" has to be scrutinised.

![1] http://europa.eu.int/eur-lex/lex/LexUriServ/site/en/com/2005/com2005_0583en01.pdf