President Halonen wants to see Nordic criminal justice policies on EU agenda
Toughening European criminal law worries Halonen and legal experts
Tarja Halonen
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As criminal law becomes increasingly integrated within the European Union, Nordic models should be actively promoted in Brussels, according to President Tarja Halonen, who addressed the issue when speaking in Helsinki on Thursday to a gathering of specialists on criminal law from the Nordic region.
Halonen expressed her concern that the EU appears to be leaning towards finding criminal law solutions to many problems, through criminalising procedures and threats of harsh punishments. She argued that the idea of criminal and penal policy as the ultimate means of resolving problems did not seem an entirely natural one.
Halonen urged that the package of a broad penal policy, sound social policy measures, and a welfare state was the best line of defence for long-term prevention of crime, and that this would be a valuable export commodity for the Nordic block to supply to the rest of Europe.
According to Halonen, the integration of criminal law statutes within the EU is likely to continue, but it is hard to gauge the speed at which such harmonisation will go forward. The decisions in principle taken in the anti-terrorism sector provide some already implemented examples of harmonising of sentences, and the planned agreement on an EU Constitution will also make for major changes in this field.
The President’s worries were shared by some of the Finnish delegates at the meeting. Professor P.O. Träskman, who currently teaches penal law at Lund University in Sweden, observed that the citizens’ sense of security in the Nordic Countries is exceptionally high, in spite of the fact that hereabouts the punishments are relatively mild and prisoner numbers are low.
Träskman suggested this was one indicator of a lack of correlation between creating security and stiffening sanctions against wrongdoers.
Prof. Pekka Koskinen of Helsinki University offered the assessment that the comparisons with war used in the fight against terrorism have led to problems: the entire issue is seen as something of a grey area in which no rules apply. Subjects such as the justification of torture, for instance, are now surfacing as hot-button issues. Koskinen referred not only to the U.S. operation in Iraq but also to a case in Germany where a man suspected of having kidnapped a girl was threatened with torture by special forces if he did not reveal the girl’s location. The police commander in the case was later sentenced for making the threats.
Helsingin Sanomat
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| 11.6.2004 - TODAY |
 President Halonen wants to see Nordic criminal justice policies on EU agenda |
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