Until the end of the 1990s, EU integration in the area of criminal law centred primarily around the regional deepening of traditional judicial cooperation in criminal matters and the development of law enforcement cooperation (including the setting up of Europol as a support agency). By the end of the 1990s respectively 2000s, the EU also gained (limited) supranational competence in the areas of substantive respectively procedural criminal law. Both judicial and law enforcement cooperation were furthered over the years via the principles of mutual recognition respectively availability, and through the setting up (and development) of Eurojust, the establishment of a European Public Prosecutor’s Office and the further development of Europol. After three decennia, the EU criminal law corpus is impressive – a core component of the EU’s ‘Area of Freedom, Security and Justice’, building on and adding to (both real and presumed) trust between the Member States.

No time for stand-still, though. Since 2020, the European Commission has launched a tsunami of new legislative proposals, including in the sphere of EU criminal law, strongly framed in its new EU Security Union Strategy.

This special issue on ‘EU criminal policy. Advances and challenges’ discusses and assesses some of the newest developments, both in an overarching fashion and in focused papers, relating to key 2022 novelties for Europol (ie the competence to conduct AI-based pre-analysis in (big) data sets, and extended cooperation with private parties), the sensitive debate since 2020 on criminalising (LGBTIQ) hate speech and hate crime at EU level, the 2022 Cybersecurity Directive, the potential of the 2020 Conditionality Regulation to address rule of law issues undermining the trustworthiness of Member States when issuing European Arrest Warrants, and concerns about free speech limitation by the 2021 Terrorist Content Online Regulation.

Gert Vermeulen is Senior Full Professor of European and international Criminal Law and Data Protection Law, Director of the Institute for International Research on Criminal Policy (IRCP), of the Knowledge and Research Platform on Privacy, Information Exchange, Law Enforcement and Surveillance (PIXLES) and of the Smart Solutions for Secure Societies (i4S) business development center, all at Ghent University, Belgium. He is also General Director Publications of the AIDP and Editor-in-Chief of the RIDP.

Wannes Bellaert is PhD Researcher and Academic Assistant at the Institute for International Research on Criminal Policy (IRCP), Ghent University.

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