European Criminal Law has developed into a complex, jagged subject matter, which at the same time has become increasingly important for everyday criminal law practice. On the one hand, this work aims to do comprehensive justice to the complexity of the matter without sacrificing readability. In order to achieve this, the book’s structure enables legal scholars and experienced practitioners to access the information relevant to them in a targeted manner and, at the same time, enables less-oriented readers to gain access to European Criminal Law. Thus, the volume both answers basic questions and offers discussion in more specialised areas. Written by experts in the field, the book offers discussions that are both of the highest academic standards and accessibly readable.

European Criminal Law in fact includes EU Law, influenced by European institutions and stemming from Member States agreements. At the same time, it is Council-of-Europe–inspired Law be it through minimum guarantees by the ECHR or through the European Court of Human Rights’ (ECtHR) influence on national criminal laws and procedures. Yet, one searches in vain for a European Criminal Code. Against the rumor that in consequence, European Criminal Law as such does not exist, the first chapter seeks to put up the umbrella and discuss and reveal sources and resources of current European Criminal Law and the intersections of EU Law on the one side and Council-of-Europe–inspired Law on the other side. That will in the end offer a panoramic view constituting European Criminal Law as the sum of European Union law imposing sanctions applicable in all Member States together with (Europeanised) national criminal law influenced by European law and Council-of-Europe inspired and set against European institutions and instruments that aim at ensuring effective criminal prosecution.

Chapter 6 addresses an alternative theory to delegation of territorial jurisdiction and implied consent. It explores whether the principle of universality can provide a coherent legal basis for the ICC’s jurisdiction in various situations allowed by the Rome Statute. It takes two different approaches to the possibility that universality provides a foundation for the ICC’s authority over nationals of non-States Parties. First is the idea that States are delegating universal jurisdiction to the ICC, along with jurisdiction based on territoriality and nationality. The second approach is one that envisages universal jurisdiction as inherent to the international community and exercisable by the ICC as an agent of this community. Ultimately this chapter argues that the limitations of both the delegated and inherent universal jurisdiction theories mean that there is no advantage to conceiving of the legal basis for the ICC’s jurisdiction as predicated on universal jurisdiction.