The Lisbon Treaty gives the EU power in civil and criminal law, justice and policing, anyone thinking that this will have little effect should be warned that the EU is already preparing the ground for harmonisation of civil and criminal law procedures throughout the 27 member states. The EU tells us ...

Have we mentioned this before ? The big growth area of EU law is criminal law. Recently, the Council has adopted a number of significant measures in the field of criminal law. Here's a brief overview of them so that...

The extent to which civil liberties are under attack from Brussels is spelt out today by Ian Traynor in The Guardian.  The EU's ambitions are awesome: an international bank of biometric data, a Euro-gendarmerie, common external frontiers, harmonisation of criminal law. Look on its works, ye mighty, and despair. As always, freedom is being curtailed in the name of security. As the E...

A last-gasp push by European lawmakers to have internet access established as an inalienable human right has derailed a sweeping package of telecoms reform

Home affairs is where all the action is in Brussels. There are desultory attempts at deeper integration in the fields of defence, diplomacy, sport and so on. But the biggie is criminal justice. Ten years ago, the EU announced the creation of what it termed, in true Ministry of Love style, the "Area of Freedom Security and Justice". The AFSJ is intended to be nothing less than a shared juridical sp...

Barack Obama, US president, is set to push for financial regulatory reform, including some of its more controversial elements, as Republican opposition to the bill appears to be softening

Hungary is set to face demands from Brussels to revise its controversial media law after a preliminary examination of the text showed parts of it were not in accordance with European law

President Barack Obama's bid to push healthcare reform, his signature policy, through Congress suffered a significant blow when the leading Democrat in the US Senate said it would miss a White House deadline to pass the legislation by August

A draft report expected to be backed by EU finance ministers in Brussels onTuesday says there is a "strong case" for curbing existing rules on banks' funding needs

Companies that admit criminal wrongdoing will no longer be able to deny the allegations in a parallel civil settlement