Fundamental rights and punishment: Is there an EU perspective?

Abstract

Taking fundamental rights into account means a limitation of repression, as an instance of the principle of proportionality or principle of necessity, of criminal intervention. The need to design European Union (EU) criminal law in compliance with the principle of proportionality is especially clear in the post-Lisbon stage, in view of the strengthening and expansion of the EU’s competence to legislate on criminal matters, enshrined in Article 83 of the Treaty on the Functioning of the EU. This article aims at analysing the terms in which European criminal law respects the aforementioned principle of proportionality of punishment and translates an EU perspective in the field of criminal sanctions.