ABSTRACT
The necessity of legal protection, or in some cases of punishing, concerns highly damaging conduct that are strongly disapproved of on a collective level. This type of conduct is often punished independently by domestic legal systems. Moreover, it clearly appears from examining supranational sources that criminal law plays a decisive role, rendered explicit in many European Union (EU) legislative measures, and it is often identified as the primary instrument for challenging criminal phenomena connected to the economic and sexual exploitation of minors. This chapter reviews the norms contained in international and EU instruments related to the regulation of child labour and to the suppression of the sexual exploitation of children. A review of these norms is useful for examining the role assigned to law and criminal trial within the larger system of challenging criminal phenomena. EU instruments for combating child labour and exploitation prove to be heterogeneous in nature as well as content.
