In a notorious speech to justify the creation of a European Public Prosecutor's Office, the Justice Commissioner, Viviane Reding, clearly stated “A federal budget needs federal protection”. In her view the EU budget “is a federal budget. If we don't protect it, nobody else will do it for us”. Probably no other EU official has articulated such an obvious relationship between the EU budget and the enactment of a European federal criminal law. Not surprisingly, this speech was given the same day that the Commission laid out its proposal for the establishment of the European Public Prosecutor's Office – another federalizing moment. Although federalism may be “[t]he Dreaded ‘F Word’” – not to mention federal criminal law – the current EU approach towards criminal law would surely benefit from a federal perspective. At a minimum, this could mean stepping outside of what is “politically correct” and acknowledging that, although not a federal state, the EU has the same problems as if it were one. Federalism has many faces, and so does federal criminal law.

To be sure, the term “European federal criminal law” evokes the existence of a European criminal code, enforced by European institutions and ruled by European courts. However, that conception of European federal criminal law is based on a certain “face” of federalism, i.e. vertical federalism, and dismisses, without further reference, another equally important federal perspective, i.e. horizontal federalism. The way in which the EU is forcing cooperation among the Member States without creating an independent supranational structure precisely highlights the latter aspect. As we shall explore, the current most obvious federal dimension of EU criminal law is horizontal federalism.

Nevertheless, vertical federal criminal law has timidly surfaced throughout EU history. For decades, countries in Europe and the EU itself have played with the idea of developing a strong system of European criminal law – with some vertical dimension. Interest in this matter waxed and waned, but the idea neither disappeared nor came to fruition. It will probably take a dramatic event to provide a catalyst for the emergence of a European (federal) structure in matters concerning criminal law. In this sense, the 2010 sovereign debt crisis and its progeny have certainly reinforced the horizontal federal dimension of EU criminal law and some vertical federal elements have surfaced.