Offenders' Rehabilitation: Towards a New Paradigm for EU Criminal Law?

The articles proposes an innovative approach to judicial cooperation in criminal matters in the EU, by discussing whether this EU policy domain is mature enough to incorporate a well established principle of national penal systems: the rehabilitation of offenders. The analysis focuses on whether any traces of this rising principle can be identified at present both in relevant EU legislation and CJEU case law. Bearing in mind European and international approaches to offenders' rehablitation, the article contends that this principle already characterises the Union legal order, although a long road has to be done towards its clearer conceètual demarkation.