Continental Criminal Law and European Human Rights Law: a complicated relationship

The relationship between Criminal Law and European Human Rights Law (EuHRL) is a complicated one. It is well-known that human rights and Criminal Law are deeply linked, for the simple reason that Criminal Justice System as a whole, namely substantive criminal law and the criminal process, "violates" human rights and ontologically affects basic freedoms: liberty and security, right to respect for private and family life, freedoms of expression and association, and so on; all rights protected by the European Convention of Human Right (ECHR) and the European Court of Strasbourg (ECtHR). Therefore, even if the Convention, compared to other international Covenants on human rights, is particularly 'poor' in criminal provisions , it is obvious that a 'judge of human rights' constantly deals with criminal law. All human beings have fundamental rights that should be protected by criminal law. The problem, however, is that within the criminal justice system, offender’s and victims’ human rights -- more often than not -- conflict with each other, and therefore must be balanced. This paper is aimed at answering the question on why does that relationship between domestic Criminal Law and EuHRL appear so complicated, and often unresolvable.