Research Papers

The EU area of freedom, security and justice (AFSJ) is one of the fastest growing areas in contemporary EU law and integration. As such it is very broadly defined field of law dealing with EU policy areas ranging from security issues and criminal law to border control and civil law cooperation. The concept of mutual recognition, based on the notion of trust between the Member States, has long played a key role in this area, translated from the internal market discourse governing free movement. But can one equate criminal law issues with those of, for example, civil law cooperation in this regard? And to what degree should there be limits to the enforcement of EU law when there is fundamental rights protection at stake? In EU criminal law cooperation, the Court of Justice has confirmed the importance of a proportionality test to the issuing of Arrest Warrants in Europe. In a similar manner, in the context of the EU asylum system, the Court recently asserted that if there are substantial grounds for believing that there are systematic flaws in the asylum procedure in the Member State responsible than the transfer of asylum seekers to that territory would be incompatible with the Charter of Fundamental Rights. Accordingly, the purpose of this paper is to look at limits to mutual recognition and its feasibility in the context of the AFSJ and thereby to explore the impact of the Charter of Fundamental Rights in this complex EU sphere.