There is no United States of Europe. There is no federal criminal law of the United States of Europe. This should be clear from the beginning. This book is not about trying to convince the reader of the existence of such institutions. The EU has not (yet) evolved into a federal state; and it may never turn into such a structure. Nevertheless, the development of the various treaties signals without a doubt a tendency towards federalism. Federalism has many faces, and so does federal criminal law. This book aims to shed some light into the federal nature of the current system of EU criminal law. In fact it will be argued that some EU institutions of criminal law are more “federal” than their counterparts in consolidated federal systems.

In this sense, the following pages must begin with a fair warning: the more the European discussion is reluctant to acknowledge the federal dimension contained in certain criminal law related institutions, the more the dangers embedded in the nature of federal criminal law are likely to appear and spread all over. An adamant recognition from the outset that the EU has similar problems to the ones faced by federal states will enable a better and more reasonable solution to these problems. Stressing the need for harmonization curtails the legitimate reasons of Member States for diverging national regulations; the lack of emphasis in a centralized EU system of criminal law protecting intrinsic EU interests deprives the EU of legitimate resources of law enforcement.

To be sure, the current system is at the same time too federal and not federal enough. It is too federal because certain institutions such as the EAW do not provide the necessary space for national diversity so that the national idiosyncrasy cannot be taken into account in such “intimate” fields as murder. It is not federal enough because the EU cannot by itself protect its own financial interests; Member States’ law enforcement authorities are supposed to provide that service. To the same extent that national authorities feel threatened by Brussels in traditional fields of criminal law, the EU feels threatened by the lack of enforcement by national authorities. Would not it be more reasonable for each of them to “take care of their own business”?