The present contribution addresses the role of EU criminal law in defending European values. The focus is on EU substantive criminal law; namely, the production, at EU level, of definitions of criminal offences and systems related to the imposition of criminal sanctions. It is the thesis of this paper that EU substantive criminal law has a key role in defending European values through the introduction of new criminal offences at EU level. The analysis focuses on the extent to which values-driven EU criminal law can be adopted, from an EU competence perspective, under the criminalization legal basis of Article 83 TFEU and proposes constitutional avenues for values-driven criminalization. The contribution calls for a paradigm shift in the adoption of EU substantive criminal law: from the current paradigm of securitized and functional criminalization to an additional paradigm of values-driven criminalization.
Valsamis Mitsilegas (Sun,) studied this question.