The European Union and Preventive Justice

Tracing the shift from responding to past crimes to anticipating future threats this book analyses the EU's preventive security paradigm across three domains: criminalisation (terrorism, organised crime, and money laundering), immigration control, and surveillance practices, from financial checks to data collection and online monitoring.

EU legal and regulatory frameworks are increasingly oriented towards identifying risks before harm occurs, reshaping fundamental concepts of criminal responsibility, migration control, and surveillance. The European Union and Preventive Justice examines this emerging ''state of prevention'' in EU law, charting a profound shift from the punishment of past wrongdoing to the anticipation and management of future security threats.The book explores three central pillars of the EU''s preventive security paradigm. First, it examines preventive criminalization, focusing on the expansion of criminal law in areas such as terrorism, organized crime, and money laundering, and the implications of criminalizing conduct at an ever earlier stage. Second, it analyses preventive immigration control, placing particular emphasis on legal and policy measures designed to prevent migrants from reaching EU territory and the shifting boundaries of responsibility and protection. Third, it considers the growing role of preventive surveillance, including customer due diligence by banks and airlines, the large-scale collection and retention of mobile communications data, and the monitoring and regulation of online content.By bringing these fields into dialogue, the book offers a comprehensive account of how prevention has become a defining feature of EU governance. It provides a critical assessment of the legal, ethical, and constitutional challenges raised by preventive security, making it essential reading for scholars and practitioners working in EU law, criminal justice, migration studies, and security governance.