ABSTRACT
Criminal justice poses the connection between the constitutional commitments to the public goods of freedom, security and justice and the representation of a legally constituted area. The criminal law exists in a close relation to the common commitments of the political community, and therefore reinforces the sense of agency in the source of legitimate authority. There exists a significant, and growing, corpus of substantive criminal law stemming from the third pillar competence in the field of co-operation on criminal justice. The augmentation of the powers of the European Union (EU), in the old-third pillar matters, is reflected in a more ambitious set of measures in the Stockholm Programme. The Treaty on the Functioning of the European Union (TFEU) which came into force at the end of 2009 promises to significantly alter the way in which criminal law legislation can be developed in the EU.
