On 5 May 2021, the Council of Europe’s Committee of Experts on the Operation of European Conventions on Co-operation in Criminal Matters (PC-OC) hosted an online conference under the auspices of the German Presidency of the Council of Europe (CoE). It had the aim of strengthen-ing international cooperation in criminal matters. Erik Verbert, president of PC-OC, delivered the welcome address, which was followed by opening speeches from Jan Kleijssen, director of the CoE’s Directorate of the Information Society and Action against Crime, and Dr. Margaretha Sudhof, State Secretary of the German Federal Ministry of Justice and Consumer Protection. During the morning session, the conference consisted of insightful expert interventions on current is-sues in mutual legal assistance (MLA). The afternoon session was devoted to extradition and split into three workshops held in parallel. Member States and representatives from third countries engaged in productive discussions and a valuable exchange of views.

Data retention has been subject of extensive and fierce discussions amongst practitioners, policy makers, civil society and academia in the EU and its Member States for many years – often coined as a clash between liberty and security. Through its jurisprudence, the Court of Justice of the EU (‘CJEU’) attempts to find a balance between the fundamental rights and freedoms at stake. This article provides a legal analysis of the jurisprudence of the CJEU on data retention, from the Decision in Digital Rights Ireland/Seitlinger to the most recent Decisions in the Cases Privacy Int., Quadrature du Net and H.K. v. Prokuratuur. It observes that while the CJEU has reconfirmed its previous jurisprudence on data retention, it widely opens the door to a variety of exceptions. The analysis covers the implications of the most recent jurisprudence of the CJEU from a legal and practical angle and seeks to establish whether, on … Read more

About ten years ago, the European Parliament and the Council of the European Union adopted Directive 2010/64/EU on the right to interpretation and translation in criminal proceedings. The Directive initially inspired high hopes, mainly because it explicitly addressed the issue of quality in interpretation and translation services. Its implementation in the EU Member States, however, has tended to be disheartening. Some even fear that current standards may be inferior to those that prevailed before the Directive was implemented. This article analyses the implementation of the Directive in Germany, Poland, and Spain and – taking the changes made to the relevant national legislation in 2013 (Germany and Poland) and 2015 (Spain) as a starting point – sheds light on early tendencies in the judicial interpretation of domestic law. It concludes that to this day, neither Germany nor Poland nor Spain has fully complied with the Directive’s quality standards for interpretation services. … Read more

From early 2020, the four nations of the United Kingdom (England, Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland) enacted (at the time of writing) some 920 pieces of legislation in which the word “coronavirus” appears in the title. Nearly all of it is secondary legislation and much of it amends earlier versions to reflect changing conditions. There is scarcely any aspect of UK life that has not been subject to, or impacted by, coronavirus legislation that has been enforced, in large part, by coercive criminal sanctions albeit tempered by a significant degree of administrative, policing and prosecutorial discretion. This article discusses that legislation, its impact on the rule of law, on UK constitutional doctrines, on institutions, on the criminal courts, and (above all) on persons whose daily life was severely impacted by COVID-19 legislation.

The uncertainties experienced throughout the COVID-19 pandemic have posed major challenges both to the law itself and to its application. Prognostic uncertainties and gaps in knowledge about the new virus, on the one hand, and the need to act quickly, on the other, confronted the legislator and administrative courts with a challenge that could not be fully met by applying the hitherto existing Infection Protection Act. This contribution examines the legal responses to dealing with such uncertainties and illustrates them with examples of how the pandemic was handled in Germany. The focus is on aspects of legislation, followed by an analysis of the possibilities for judicial review of legislative decisions taken under uncertainty.

This article describes the heightened risk of corruption and other criminal phenomena that accompany the financial stimulus and economic recovery measures taken by governments in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic. International organisations (United Nations, OECD) and European organisations (Council of Europe, European Union) have identified these risks ‒ including the possible involvement of organised crime ‒ and recommended taking timely and appropriate countermeasures ranging from prevention to prosecution. The European Union has established a new conditionality mechanism for funding post-COVID-19 recovery: if a Member State does not respect the rule of law, this could undermine the principle of sound financial management, which may ultimately lead to the denial of Union funds. These measures should ideally have a positive long-term effect on transparency and good governance.