The gradual increase of the European Union’s competences in the field of criminal law, and the growing ambition of the European Commission’s proposals, make criminal law one of the areas of EU law on which most attention is focused. At the heart of this field, criminal procedural law is made particularly interesting by its position at the intersection of two sectors that were traditionally excluded from the European Union’s harmonisation competences: criminal law and procedural law. It also remains an area of significant discrepancies among the Member States. Although the impact of European integration on criminal procedure cannot be studied in isolation from instruments which primarily relate to substantial criminal law, the European law of criminal procedure warrants specific attention.

The conference will be structured around three main topics. The first aims to examine the impact of the emergence of a European criminal procedural law on the judicial systems and procedural laws of the Member States. The second will deal with the - as yet - little studied impact of this emergence on EU procedural law itself. The third will allow further reflection concerning the elaboration of European standards, for instance in the field of fundamental rights, which frame this emerging criminal procedural law.