Etiologie projevů trestního práva v Evropské unii
Authors: Polák Přemysl , Fenyk Jaroslav 
Published: February 2025

This work is focused in particular on explaining general questions of law in the European Union, which means primarily clarifying the legal nature of the European Community and the European Union, the essence of European law and its sources, as well as explaining the characteristics of both communal and union law. These introductory remarks are crucial for understanding the subsequent definitions regarding the development of the penal aspects of European law and are directed in particular toward the field affected by criminal law. Historically, the development of criminal law and the often related stages of development in international judicial cooperation in criminal matters within a European Union context, may be characterised, for example, by period: (a) Up to the establishment of the European Union; (b) From the establishment of the European Union to the Treaty of Amsterdam; (c) From the Treaty of Amsterdam to the present; (d) After the Treaty establishing a Constitution for Europe. All three of the aforementioned periods are characterised by the advancement of ideas related to so-called European judicial space in criminal matters as the legal instrument of international judicial cooperation. This originated in the period prior to the establishment of the European Union, but initially developed within its framework. Since the middle of the 1990s, the idea of European judicial space in criminal matters was specified in the requirement for introducing the so-called European territoriality requirement. The significance of European territoriality rests in expressing the fiction of a single European Union territory, in which jurisdiction would be performed for citizens of the European Union or persons in the territory of the Union without hindrance caused by state borders or under the conspicuously simplified valid rules of international judicial cooperation in effect prior to the establishment of the European Union. The period up to the establishment of the European Union is characterised particularly by the conclusion of the so-called Schengen Treaty, particularly the agreement dated June 14, 1985 on the gradual removal of border controls at common borders. This agreement has become the basis for accepting the subsequent document, which is the Implementing Convention, dated June 19, 1990. Although “Schengen” was originally established in the period prior to the Maastricht Treaty, it gradually became clear that the conclusion of the Implementing Convention on Mutual Judicial Cooperation must also affect the European Union itself. In the era from the Maastricht Treaty, prior to the Treaty of Amsterdam, new legal tools were successfully implemented legally for international judicial cooperation in criminal matters and for the protection of the financial interests of the European Community against perpetration of criminal activity of various types noted directly in the Maastricht Treaty itself. In the field of protecting the financial interests of the European Community, the Convention on the Protection of the European Community’s Financial Interests was finally prepared on July 26, 1995, followed by the foundation of the European Judicial Network, and leading to the compilation of an opus on the substance and procedure of European criminal law under the title Corpus Juris. In significance, the last period, beginning with the acceptance of the Treaty of Amsterdam, is further increase in the intensity of cooperation in the field of criminal law. The sitting of the European Council in Tampere provided an impetus to the establishment of a section for coordinating international judicial cooperation in select serious criminal matters of trans-national criminality – EUROJUST. The growing threat of international terrorism and the need to fight organised crime within the territory of the European Union have been the impetus for accepting a framework resolution on a European Arrest Warrant. The discussion has advanced on the theme of establishing a single European public prosecutor and the need for introducing a “European evidentiary order” and a European Criminal Record has also come under consideration. It is taken into consideration possible evolution of criminal law after ratification of the Treaty establishing a Constitution for Europe.