ABSTRACT. Lacey holds that the criminal law can be conceived as a set of norms backed up by the threat and imposition of sanctions. Spencer takes "harmonization" as covering three distinct but related processes: (i) making the rules of criminal law and criminal procedure in different countries similar, although not necessarily identical; (ii) making some of the rules across the different countries identical: (iii) replacing a portion of the different rules by a single supra-national rule, enforced by a supra-national authority. Beken notices that the mere existence of differences in the various criminal justice systems throughout Europe has very few formal implications for those crimes without any link to other systems.