In the last decade, victim protection has rightly received political attention. On European Union (EU) level the Council Resolution of 10 June 2011 advocated the active protection of crime victims as ‘a high priority for the European Union and its Member States’. A previous call to both the Commission and the Member States to improve effective legislation and practical support measures for victim protection, was followed by a joint directive from the European Parliament and the Council.

In its recent judgments in bpost and Nordzucker, the CJEU held – in essence – that to prevent a violation of the ne bis in idem guarantee in Article 50 of the Charter of Fundamental Rights of the European Union, public authorities need to cooperate and coordinate their punitive enforcement actions, also when they are active in different policy areas or in other jurisdictions. According to Michiel Luchtman, the paradoxical result seems to be that to prevent one fundamental right from being violated, it is necessary to accept (sometimes intrusive) interferences with other rights. Has the Court now entered a slippery slope, eliminating fundamental rights barriers, to promote the effective enforcement of EU law? And if so, at the expense of what?