Excluding a farmer from receiving a single area payment in a given year and reducing the payment he could claim within the following years, imposed as a penalties for the breach of the EU agricultural provisions, do not constitute criminal sanctions. They are specific administrative instruments applied against the farmer who had decided to participate in an agricultural aid scheme. In such a case, the ne bis in idem principle does not apply. Thus, exclusion and reduction of agricultural payments do not preclude sentencing the farmer in criminal proceeding for the same breach of the EU agricultural provisions. This conclusion... Read more

By law of 27 March 2003, the Central Office for Seizure and Confiscation (COSC) was created in Belgium. The new institution, established within the Office of Public Prosecutors, assists the judicial authorities in criminal matters in the areas of seizure of assets, the implementation of criminal procedure with a view to the confiscation of assets, and the enforcement of final and conclusive sentences and orders involving confiscation of assets.1 One of the forms of assistance consists of the management of all cash, seized in criminal matters all over the country. By law of 20 July 2005, a new provision was... Read more

Council Framework Decision 2005/214/JHA on the application of the principle of mutual recognition to financial penalties was implemented into German law in October 2010. With this instrument, it is for the first time possible to enforce financial penalties in all Member States of the European Union using a uniform procedure, provided that the Member States have adopted the necessary implementation laws. FD 2005/214/JHA is governed by the principle of mutual recognition, which became a cornerstone of cooperation both in civil and in criminal matters at the Council meeting in Tampere in 1999. In particular, the concept of list offences under Art 5 of the FD, where double criminality is not verified by the executing State, is based upon this principle.
In Germany, the Federal Office of Justice (Bundesamt für Justiz) in Bonn has been designated as the competent authority for incoming and outgoing requests under FD 2005/214/JHA. The following article gives … Read more

I. Introduction On 20 October 2010, the European Parliament and the Council adopted Directive 2010/64/EU on the right to interpretation and translation in criminal proceedings.1 The Directive is the first legislative instrument in the field of criminal law that has been adopted under the rules of the Lisbon Treaty, and it is the first measure of the Council’s “Roadmap for strengthening procedural rights of suspected or accused persons in criminal proceedings.”2 The adoption of the Directive provides interesting insight into the concrete application of the Lisbon Treaty, and it marks a significant step in the process of strengthening the procedural... Read more