The EU as a Coercive Polity? The Case of the European Public Prosecutor’s Office

In this paper I set out the hypothesis that the EU is becoming a coercive polity. In setting out that hypothesis, I look at a particular area in which the powers and competences of the EU have developed in particularly striking ways, namely the creation of a European Public Prosecutor’s Office (EPPO) and assess whether these developments show that the EU is, or is becoming a coercive polity. The ability to exercise coercive force has been identified as a ‘core state power’. But the EU is not a state. This was expressly acknowledged by the Court of Justice of the EU, which pointed out that the EU “under international law, precluded by its very nature of being considered a State”. The territory of the EU is constituted of the territory of the 28 member states, and within that territory, those states qua states are the political entities which, if we accept Weber’s definition, ‘successfully claim the monopoly of the legitimate use of physical force’ within the territory which constitutes the European Union. So if the hypotheses is well founded, and the EU does in fact exercise coercive force within the territory of the European Union, this has very profound implications for both the Union and for the Member States. It could imply that the EU is in fact a state, despite assertions to the contrary by the Court of Justice.
The task of this paper will be to identify whether the EPPO, as an EU body that has the competence to initiate and conduct prosecutions against individuals in national courts, exercises coercive power against those individuals.