The concept of criminal matter in the European Courts' case law. The protection of fundamental principles v. political compromise

the article is divided in four parts. First, the Court's jurisprudence about the Engel criterion is deeply analyzed (§ 2 and ff), followed by the examination of a series of controversial cases in order to better understand the actual application of these cri-teria and to focus the real nature – on the basis of Engel parameters - of some kind of problematic measure, like the security measures (§ 3 and ff). The third part ana-lyses the European Court of Justice’s jurisprudence about the concept of criminal matter and its resistance to recognise the punitive nature of EU sanctions (§ 4). The fourth part addresses the ECHR’s case law on confiscation as an example of the difficulty of coherently applying the Engel’s criteria by the European Court (§ 5 and ff). In conclusion, the importance of this case law about the autonomous concept of "criminal matter" will be emphasized because it has been the basis for the recognition of the fundamental principles of the punitive legal order, and, in this way it has significantly contributed to harmonise the punitive systems.