Mobility Phase: Université Libre de Bruxelles - Center for European Law
Legal issues in conjunction with the implementation of the European Public Prosecutor's Office in particular with regard to the principle of mutual trust
Photo: Joanna Scheffel
Stefanie Beermann considers herself a passionate European and world citizen. She spent an exchange year in the United States, an eight-month voluntary service in South Africa and currently appreciates the vibrant atmosphere of Berlin. In Berlin and Lyon she studied law with a focus on Europeanization and Internationalization of Civil and Economic Law. Her final paper was titled “Relationship between word reporting and photojournalism within the framework of the general right of personality”. After passing her first state examination in 2016, she moved to Cologne for her legal clerkship with stations at the German Permanent Mission at the United Nations in Vienna and at the Directorate-General for Justice and Consumers of the European Commission in Brussels. Throughout her academic career, the public sector has always been a point of attraction for her. She worked at the Institute of Energy and Competition Law in Communal Management (EweRK e.V.), for the federal broadcasting network ARD in communications and for the European Department of the administration of the German Bundestag. After having worked as a Lawyer, she has been a re:constitution Fellow for the academic year 2019/2020 and is a Laureat of the ministry of economics in preparation for the German EU Council Presidency in 2020.
Legal issues in conjunction with the implementation of the European Public Prosecutor's Office in particular with regard to the principle of mutual trust
In the lights of the implementation of the European Public Prosecutor’s Office (EPPO) as a current event, the aim of the research project is to explore the striking inconsistencies hereof. It appears that the implementation of the EPPO’s legal authority will not only create future gateways to problems and ambiguities regarding the distribution of competences at EU level, most of all the very establishment of this new institutional body calls into question a deeply anchored EU-wide principle: the principle of mutual trust. Although still valuing it as essential, the judicial system seems to be set on taking other diverting lines to establish exeptions to the principle. The introduction of the EPPO constitutes an opportunity to scrutinise its raison d’être in the context of a presumably receding principle of mutual trust throughout the Member States, particularly in terms of EU-wide cooperation. The discrepancies between the desire of the EU to consolidate the supervision of crimes against the EU budget and the involuntary necessity to depend on national authorities are remarkable. How can the principle of mutual trust be of receding value when relevant EU institutions still inevitably depend on it? The study pursues this topic in collaborating with different Member States.
