Book Review: The Legitimacy of EU Criminal Law
| Author | Luigi Lonardo |
| DOI | http://doi.org/10.1177/20322844211056977 |
| Published date | 01 September 2022 |
| Date | 01 September 2022 |
| Subject Matter | Book Reviews |
New Journal of European Criminal Law
2022, Vol. 13(3) 378–381
© The Author(s) 2021
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The Legitimacy of EU Criminal Law, I. Wieczorek (Oxford: Hart, 2020), ISBN 978-1-5099-1974-1, 243 pp., £75
(hb), £36.99 (pb).
Reviewed by: Luigi Lonardo
1
,
1
University College Cork, Ireland
DOI: 10.1177/20322844211056977
One of the distinctive features of criminal law in relation to other branches of law is the traditional
philosophical sophistication to which the subject matter forced its scholars, who are bound to
address the question ‘why criminal law?’What are its rationales, and, so, when is criminal law
necessary or legitimate (and are these synonyms)? These ‘inescapable’questions had not been
object of a systematic treatment, as far as EU criminal law is concerned. They are now at the core of
Irene Wieczorek’s excellent monograph, which fully achieves its declared objective to contribute to
‘the emerging discussion on the legitimacy of EU criminal law, and especially on its normative,
criminal legal theory, dimension’(p. 4), and thus complements fruitfully contributions which had
focused on the social and political legitimacy of EU criminal law.
The Legitimacy of EU Criminal Law, as its title promises, has a broad and ambitious focus, to
contribute, ultimately, to a discussion of the relationship between the EU and its polity. The book
addresses three questions (p. 6): ‘what indications do EU constitutional values and principles
provide on the legitimate uses of criminal law by the EU? How does the EU justify resort to criminal
law in practice?’And, inevitably, ‘are such EU criminalisation choices consistent with EU con-
stitutional values and principles?’The conclusion, as a result of a carefully researched and tightly
argued book, is that by and large, EU criminal law follows a a purely symbolic agenda (symbolic
criminal law is the one ‘used to sanction behaviour affecting important interests, but which is not
necessarily the most effective tool to actually discourage the undesirable behaviour’p. 40), even
though this conclusion is duly nuanced with reference to several concrete examples of EU sec-
ondary legislation. Among these, the 2008 framework decision on racism and xenophobia, the 2014
market abuse directive, and the 2017 protection of financial interests directive.
The theoretical criminal law framework chosen by the author to analyse the rationales of EU
criminal law is comprehensive in so far as it joins deontological and utilitarian approaches. This
follows from the author’s choice to systematise the normative theoretical explanations and eval-
uations –for the book does both –of EU harmonisation of criminal law. The explanatory part seeks
to understand why or with what rationale the EU intervenes in criminal legislation, whereas the
evaluative or normative part consists of assessing those explanations against the benchmark of EU
constitutional values (the author refers to both evaluation and explanation under the phrase ‘le-
gitimacy of EU criminal law’). For deontological approaches, the author draws heavily on
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