Most powers of the European Union in the field of criminal law are not exclusive, but jointly executed with the Member States: norms have been formulated on the European level, their implementation and enforcement takes place on the national level. This is for instance the case with the prohibition of insider dealing.
This book aims to present a coherent picture of the influence of Union law in national criminal law and criminal procedure and also tries to sketch the contours of the emerging European criminal justice system of the Union. Therefore, European criminal law is interpreted as a multilevel field of law in which the European Union either has normative influence on substantive criminal law, criminal procedure or on the cooperation between Member States supplemented by the area in which the European Union enforces criminal law directly.
It is one of the aims of this book to convey the understanding of European criminal law as a field of law in which there is by definition an overlap between Union law and national law. To this end, it combines a top-down approach (perspective of the Union) with a bottom-up approach (perspective from the national criminal justice system).
European criminal law does not intend to abolish the existing national criminal justice systems of the Member States. It provides for an important role of the Member States. When European criminal law is presented in an integrative manner, it will be possible to identify the mutual influence of Union law and national law in criminal law. It will be possible by this approach to delineate the competences of the European Union and those of the Member States more precisely.
This is why the case law of the European Court of Justice is of utmost importance to national criminal proceedings. In no other book all cases of the Court relevant for criminal matters have been dealt with in such an elaborate way.
The book was written for criminal lawyers as well as for European lawyers, for practitioners, academics as well as for students in European criminal law. It has the ambition to make the readership assess the mutual influence of Union law and criminal law in its proportions. Sometimes Union law will prevail, occasionally national criminal law will prevail over Union law.

Please note that this book is available as a student textbook at £58. This can be purchased by students or by bookshops who have a course adoption to fulfil.