La cooperación penal internacional y la unión europea: ¿hacia un derecho penal comunitario?

Abstract

The Treaty created by the European Union did not establish a criminal penalizing community system. This omission was justified by resorting to the concept of sovereignty, because it was understood that penalizing powers belonged to each State, and by holding that Criminal Law is the expression of each State’s identity. Because of the above, it is viable to unify this branch of the Law at a European level. The author notices the presence of a seedling of Criminal Law in the European Union from the Treaty that created it; gives evidence of the existence of problems causing injustice, inefficacy and extreme complexity of the European criminal repression; and puts forward mechanisms for solving such problems, laying the foundations for a common substantive Criminal Law and establishing uniform criminal procedures.