Università Roma Tre

The course "European Criminal Law" aims to examine the progressive influence on the national criminal law by European law, that include the EU law and the ECHR system. Until a few decades ago the combination of "European law" and "criminal law" appeared almost an oxymoron. The system of sources of law is conversely today more complex and labyrinthine and, at least in some respects, it is gradually changing the face of criminal law, that seemed like the more solid articulation of national sovereignty.

The lessons will be developed following the main theme of the principle of legality in criminal law, in its articulations of the legislature's exclusive power to create crimes, the principle of determinacy and the principle of non retroactivity of criminal law (supplemented by that of the retroactivity of more favorable law): the objective it is to examine the metafomorphosis of the criminal legality, especially as a result of European jurisprudence.
The course will also try to focus on the significant changing of the Italian system of sanctions as a result of the europeanisation of criminal law, on the side of the "double track" between criminal penalties and security measures and on the side of the compresence of criminal and administrative sanctions.
The last part of the lessons will examine the "multi-level" protection of human rights, which is one of the challenges still open to real integration (juridical) European.