*** FRANCESCA GALLI, ANNE WEYEMBERGH (Editors) Do labels still matter? Blurring boundaries between administrative and criminal law - The influence of the EU. Editions de l'Université de Bruxelles (26 av. Paul Héger, B-1000 Brussels. Tel: (32-2) 6503799 - fax: 6503794 - Email: editions@ulb.ac.be - Internet: http://www.editions-universite-bruxelles.be ). « Etudes européennes » series. 2014, 256 pp. €28. ISBN 978-2-8004-1527-7.
This book is the extension of an international conference organised just under two years ago by the European Criminal Law Academic Network and the European Studies Institute at the Free University of Brussels. Very usefully, it enables us to take stock of two striking developments in criminal law in European Union countries. The first involves the indisputable and growing “Europeanization” that has occurred since the entry into force of the Lisbon Treaty and which provides it with an increasingly “supranational nature” that upsets its traditional and exclusive relationship with the nationstate. The second tendency can be interpreted as the “growing blur” that is evident now throughout Europe between criminal and administrative laws. This is due to several different reasons and has a number of consequences that are not always necessarily negative. This growing cohabitation, particularly when the question of terrorism and human trafficking is involved is the subject of 14 different contributions to this book. An additional advantage of the book is the fact that the increasingly porous nature of the borders between criminal and legal laws, which is usually tackled at a national level, is analysed in this book in the context of the influence exercised on this subject by the process of Europeanization.
In the first part of the book, the way in which the two laws are enacted is observed in different criminal domains were the European Union is now playing an increasingly active role, such as tackling trafficking in human beings and terrorism, as well as the fields of competition, the protection of the Union's financial interests, market abuse and environmental offences. According to Francesca Galli, a senior lecturer at the University of Maastricht and Professor Anne Weyembergh (Université libre de Bruxelles), this examination shows that cohabitation varies so sharply from one field to another know that it ultimately creates an image of “variable geometry”. Nonetheless, with a certain amount of caution, they attempt to provide four different categories in this area: the fields in which organised crime and human trafficking take place and where criminal law continues to largely prevail; areas such as terrorism, and where it gets its funding from and money-laundering, “the need to develop a preventive approach” that leads to the moderate uses administrative measures; the category covering, for example, the protection of the Union's financial interests, market abuse and environmental offences in which there is a regime that merges the two laws that have gradually been implemented but without any genuinely integrated strategy and finally, the last category, the very particular case of competition, which best illustrates, “the gradual blurring of boundaries between both fields of law”. In a more transversal approach, the second part of the book involves a number of other researchers more specifically examining the question of whether the Union contributes, and in which way, to the development of this co-existence of criminal and administrative laws. The majority of the authors respond to this question in the affirmative but are the ramifications always negative? No because, for example, certain “procedural safeguards” that prisoners and suspects benefit from in criminal law can now be transposed into administrative law, even though the area of competition remains, in this context, slightly different. Nonetheless, one aspect that receives a lot of criticism throughout this book is the “legal loophole” that results from the fact that the Union has not until now been concerned with managing the simultaneous use of the two regimes. This lack of organisation is summed up by the two editors of the book as, “both detrimental to the person's fundamental rights and to the effectiveness/efficiency of the fight against crime”. Some people may naturally be tempted in certain cases to promote administrative measures and procedures for the only “good” reason that individual safeguards contained within them are, nevertheless, less safe than they are in criminal law. Although several authors are correct when they call for administrative law to be given the same status as criminal law in the area of individual safeguards, can we be quite sure that this progress will not be done to be detriment of eficiency that allows administrative law to be used against offenders? Obviously, this issue will definitely provide a lot of subject matter for future conferences and books.
Michel Theys
*** DIEGO ACOSTA ARCARAZO, CIAN C MURPHY (Editor): EU Security and Justice Law. After Lisbon and Stockholm. Hart Publishing (16c Worcester Place, Oxford, OX1 2JW, UK. Tel: (44-1865) 517530 - fax: 510710 - Email: mail@hartpub.co.uk - Internet: http://www.hartpub.co.uk ). « Modern Studies in European Law » series. 2014, 211 p. £50. ISBN 978-1-84946-422-2.
This publication follows on from three discussions organised with the support of the Centre of European Law at King's College, London. It should prove a very precious tool for those who want to know where we came from and where exactly we are in the area of justice and home affairs. It was written by a number of different contributors and focuses on the situation up until 1 June last year. In their introductory chapter, senior and lecturers Cian C. Murphy (University of Bristol) and Diego Acosta Arcarazo (King's College) provide a useful explanation about the successive treaties following the Maastricht Treaty in this field, as well as the developments involving the area of freedom, justice and security in the context of the Tampere Programmes, that sought to, “ensure that freedom, including the right to free movement, was enjoyed 'in conditions of security and justice accessible to all”, in The Hague in 2004 - , which was, “in part, a product of the “war of terror”, triggered by the Bush administration following 11 September 2001, and particularly that in Stockholm, whose explicit goal was to ensure, “respect for fundamental freedoms and integrity while guaranteeing security in Europe”. The legal experts contributing to this publication seek to analyse the impact of the Stockholm Programme in terms of protecting individual rights and respect for the rule of law in light of the acts introduced in a variety of different areas such as criminal law, the fight against terrorism, immigration, asylum, etc. As explained in his forward by Francis G. Jacobs, the former Advocate General of the European Court of Justice, although the fundamental principle of the rule of law is now contained in Article 2 in the European Union Treaty, there is nothing to suggest that there should be “taken for granted”. As demonstrated in many contributions made to this publication, the inclusion of concepts such as European citizenship and fundamental rights in the area of justice and home affairs, can, paradoxically, lead to a situation in which European law and the role of the courts, particularly the European Court of Justice, become less predictable and more uncertain. From beginning to end, this book provides a meticulous decoding by the European legal experts of the current situation affecting the area of freedom, security and justice and it is imperative that our political leaders take this into consideration.
(MT)
*** MARIE ANAGNOU: L'espace européen de liberté, de sécurité et de la justice (1999-2013). Évaluation des programmes d'action: Tampere - La Haye - Stockholm. Éditions Papazisi (2 Nikitara, GR-10678 Athens. Tel: (30-210) 3822496 - fax: 3809020 - Email: papazisi@otenet.gr - Internet: http://www.papazisi.gr ). 2014, 376 pp. €24.50. ISBN 978-960-02-2954-7.
The area of freedom, security and justice is now at the heart of the Union's political concerns. Originally, questions borders, asylum, immigration, security, the fight against terrorism and organised crime, were the exclusive remit of the member states. In this essay, a professor at the Faculty of International and European Affairs at Pantheon University, describes the different stages that led to creating this common area and the continuous efforts to reinforce it. At the same time, a critical assessment of the results obtained during these different stages is also provided.
(AKa)
*** AMI-JACQUES RAPIN: Pour en finir avec le terrorisme. L'équivoque de la terreur, de la Révolution française aux attentats jihadistes. Peter Lang (1 Moosstrasse, Postfach 350, CH-2542 Pieterlen. Tel: (41-32) 3761717 - fax: 3761727 - fax: info@peterlang.com - Internet: http://www.peterlang.com ). 2014, 219 pp. €64.20. ISBN 978-3-0343-1352-0.
Ami-Jacques Rapin, a senior lecturer in education and research at the faculty of social and political science at the University of Lausanne, uses this small book to paint a brilliant and convincing update on, no, not the terrorism that many pundits would have us believe at a political or superficial level as concocted in the press, but something quite different. The explanation of terrorism is often reduced to a “disarming tautology” where, “terrorism is what provokes terror!” This reached its high point on 11 September 2001, when President Bush and his administration semantically fused terror and terrorism into a single word, “that was simultaneously used to describe the kind of violence and the psychological impact of this violence”. The author immediately sets out to correct this interpretation and explains that terror is not a specific form of violence or a political idea, only, “an extreme emotion that affects human beings when they are confronted with a perceived danger or threat”. If we consider terror as an ideal or political principle it is done so through, “a synecdoche, namely, a rhetorical device that seeks to describe a phenomenon with the term that refers to one of its component parts”. This synecdoche is based on two postulates that Ami-Jacques Rapin uses in his deconstruction. The first involves the intention to create terror, a principle in which terrorists, if they are to be recognised as such, must carry out by way their determination to spread terror in the population and/or within the authorities and not just by using violence to overcome the will of their adversaries. The second postulate involves the “effect of terror” whereby terrorist acts provoke, “a form of extreme fear among the subjects that are not directly exposed to the physical consequences of the violence in question”. The author seeks to provide a fresh approach to all of these different ideas and scientifically demonstrate the reasons for the, “confusion in which the debate on terrorism is submerged”. The three first chapters therefore look at the circumstances in which the words “terror” and “terrorism” were introduced into the political lexicon. Subsequently, we obviously have to go back to the Terror under the French Revolution but also the Russian Revolutionaries from the Will of the People group fighting against state power. Through the wave of anarchist attacks during the 1890s, the author demonstrates the fragility of the two postulates, which is confirmed at the end of the book when the author asserts that the notions of terror and terrorism, “provide a too hasty and misleading response to questions regarding certain forms of political violence”, which subsequently reduces our ability to tackle this question.
(MT)
*** SARAH WEBER: Malta und die Boatpeople. Eine Ethnologie der interkulturellen Begegnung. Peter Lang (see address details attached). 2013, 379 pp. €62.95. ISBN 978-3-631-64077-7.
In her thesis, Sarah Weber looks at the question of migration from Africa to Europe. Her analysis focuses on immigrants in Malta. Based on an in the field study, with copious accompanying documentation, she provides a study carried out in an ethnographic and sociological perspective in which she examines the process involving the reception of migrants and their relationship with the native population and the subsequent interaction that results from this. The basic question of the thrust of her work is as follows: how can intercultural meetings and relationships as a concrete experience be used as a resource for tackling racism and xenophobia in the current migratory context in Europe. Is this kind of meeting between migrants and the native population an essential category in ethnology? The author is certainly well-intentioned but given her unilaterally Third World-oriented and Marxist perspective of the phenomena analysed and her anti-European, pro-immigrant partisan approach, her contribution to the fight against xenophobia is in danger of being in vain, despite a number of methodological precautions she includes.
(GLe)
*** DANIELA BIDELL: Die Erstreckung der Zuständigkeiten der EuGVO auf Drittstaatensachverhalte. Unter besonderer Berücksichtigung des Kommissionsvorschlags KOM (2010) 748 endg. Peter Lang (voir coordonnées supra). Collection "Schriften zum internationalen Privat- und Verfahrensrecht". 2014, 324 p. €64.95. ISBN 978-3-631-64706-6.
In this thesis, Daniela Bidell look at the question of whether the scope of the European regulation on legal competence, recognition and enactment of decisions in civil and commercial fields should be extended to the defence party living in third countries. In her effort to tackle this question, the author seeks to explain the draft regulation on the matter developed by the European Parliament and the Council COM (2010) 748. She concludes that such an extension of scope for the regulation is indeed desirable, even though this has not yet been demanded at a formal legal level.
(GLe)
*** MARION GREESKE: Die Kollisionsnormen der neuen EU-Erbrechtsverordnung. Peter Lang (voir coordonnées supra). Collection "Schriften zum internationalen Privat- und Verfahrensrecht". 2014, 220 pp. €54.95. ISBN 978-3-631-64739-4.
In this thesis, Marion Greeske analyses the third chapter in the European regulation on successions and calls for a new casting and simplification of the rules on conflicts involving the right of succession at international and European levels. The thesis particularly underlines the novelties introduced from a German perspective, such as the replacement of nationality by the place of habitual residency, as the first criteria for determining the law applicable, similarly to the possibility offered for choosing what law should be applicable. Concepts relating to international law on succession, such as referrals to public order, are also thoroughly developed.
(GLe)