Victims in European Criminal Law. An Overview of What Happens Across the Pond

The paper is part of the symposium organized by the University of the Pacific Law Review Victims’ Rights Movement: Past, Present, and the Future. The purpose of this paper is to present a concise overview of the European law’s contributions to national legal systems in the fields of victims’ rights and criminalization standards, encompassing both the narrower context of European Union law and the broader context of the European Convention on Human Rights. The ensuing discussion aims also to establish a foundation for the subsequent comparative analysis of constitutional roles and their implications within criminal justice systems (Matteo L. Mattheudakis) and restorative justice (Kolis Summerer). The perspective adopted in the study is that of the North American reader approaching European criminal law for the first time with the aim to figure out what happens “across the pond.” Notwithstanding the predominantly informative nature of the paper, a critical balance of the concrete effects of these inputs will be drawn at the conclusion of this comparative excursion. To quote Mike Vitiello, the focus will be on “what it gets right” and “what it gets wrong.”