Fool Me Once, Fool Me Twice: National Standards of Protection in Criminal Law Matters after Lin II

This article examines the ECJ’s Grand Chamber judgment in Lin II, which reaffirms the obligation of Romanian courts to disapply a national lex mitior standard where its application creates a systemic risk of impunity for serious fraud affecting the EU’s financial interests. It analyses the Court’s response to the resistance of Romanian courts and its attempt to distinguish Lin II from Taricco II. The article argues that this distinction is ultimately unconvincing: the decisive difference lies less in the nature of the national standards at stake than in the ECJ’s choice to assess the systemic risk of impunity itself. In this respect, Lin II marks a return to the original logic of Taricco and confirms the limited space left to national constitutional standards in criminal matters when they conflict with EU law.