ABSTRACT

This chapter aims to show how the institutionalisation of European cooperation in criminal matters influences the territories and practices of criminal law with tangible results. The creation of new legal instruments in favour of strengthened cooperation (especially Eurojust Unit and the European Arrest Warrant) introduce variable-geometry approaches within a European legal space. To explore this transnational process, one has to focus on the political, social and legal dynamics that shaped the new territories of justice. The real mechanisms of cooperation as the recognition of foreign judicial decisions, the implementation of the Joint Investigations Team, or the procedures to accelerate the exchange of informations and persons, introduce new practices for the European and also the national criminal law authorities. By highlighting the actual circumstances of day-to-day cooperation, we can examine the consequences of this transnational extension of national criminal law. In this new legal territory, how do the national judges consider these new instruments to investigate at the transnational level? To what extent is the Eurojust Unit an illustration of the development of new European criminal practices?