The Criminal Justice System in The European Union and Australia: A Comparative Law Study

The Lisbon Treaty consolidated some federal elements that have an impact on the future development of the System of Criminal Justice of the EU. The question is that EU Member States do not have any experience about how to deal with a model of “federal” Criminal Law. For different reasons, the Australian Federal System is a good example to look at in order to get some responses. For instance, the Treaty of Lisbon has created, like in Australia, a System of EU Criminal Law in which there are not any “federal” courts to deal with “eurocrimes”. These must be applied by regular national courts using national procedure laws. The fact is that the achievement of common or coordinated responses by groups of polities, whether in federation or not, may attract similar solutions and give rise to similar problems. Although operating on vastly different population sizes and across vastly different ranges of diversity, the European Union and Australia may benefit by mutual consideration of the approaches taken by each other in co-operative arrangements in Criminal matters between their Member States.