The cornerstones of the protection of fundamental rights in criminal matters in the EU

Abstract

The present paper aims to provide an outline of the protection of fundamental rights, especially the right to a fair trial, from the perspective of criminal procedure and mutual legal assistance in criminal matters in the European Union. It concentrates on the attitude of the Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU) towards the protection of fundamental rights on a European level - as opposed to national level -, also taking into account the evolution of the system of the European judicial protection of fundamental rights with respect to the dialogue between national ordinary courts and national constitutional courts and the CJEU. The central thematic element is the jurisprudence of the Court of Justice of the European Union, concentrating on the evolution of its case law concerning fundamental rights in criminal procedure and mutual legal assistance in criminal matters during the last two decades, which is the era
of the growing importance of criminal law and criminal procedural law in EU law. The background is rather the horizontal and vertical cooperation in
criminal matters, its evolution, the central role of the principle of mutual recognition and the underlying mutual trust of the Member States’ authorities in respect of each other’s criminal justice systems. The relevance of both harmonisation and the application of the mutual recognition principle to mutual legal assistance is inevitably connected to both the similarities and the differences of national legislation and criminal justice systems which are the basis of the preliminary ruling procedures of the Court of Justice of the European Union which also serves as a driving force of mutual trust and development in the area of European criminal law, while also bearing a growing importance in the system of judicial protection of fundamental rights throughout Europe.