This case annotation on the judgment of the European Court of Human Rights of 14 January 2010 in Tsonyo Tsonev v. Bulgaria (№ 2 - application № 2376/03) reveals that the case entails several significant and sensitive issues of fundamental importance, greatly exceeding the dimensions of the specific legal dispute:
- The enforcement of the final judgments of the European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR) against Bulgaria;
- The application of the ne bis in idem rule;
- The interplay between criminal and administrative penal liability of the same person for the same act;
- The role of the interpretative activity of the General Assembly of the Criminal Chambers (GACC) of the Supreme Court of Cassation (SCC) of the Republic of Bulgaria.
This article discusses these items and introduces the reader to the mechanisms in Bulgaria for following up ECtHR judgments, as well as a new approach to the application of … Read more

One of the most controversially discussed and unresolved issues in extradition law, namely whether extradition can be denied because elements of a fair trial will not be ensured in the requesting (issuing) State, gained new momentum after the CJEU’s judgment in “LM” of 25 July 2018 (C-216/18 PPU). This judgment relates to the framework of the European Arrest Warrant – the surrender system established in the EU in 2002. After briefly classifying the problem doctrinally and discussing the approach taken by the ECtHR, the article explains the CJEU’s line of arguments in LM. The analysis focuses, in particular, on the necessary test phases that the executing judicial authority must carry out in order to find out possible fundamental rights breaches in the issuing EU Member State. The article then analyses the reviews of this judgment by national courts. The follow-up decision of the referring Irish court is compared with court … Read more

The advent of the European Public Prosecutor’s Office (“EPPO”) has been broadly welcomed throughout the European legal community, including by legal entities operating in the single market and their advisors. Even so, considerable uncertainties remain for these economic actors on how the new enforcement regime will affect them. These uncertainties stem from the fact that the twenty-two jurisdictions in which the EPPO will operate have in some cases radically different approaches to issues such as the nature of and conditions for corporate criminal liability as well as the substantive and procedural framework governing corporate criminal investigations. The fluidity with which the EPPO will conduct investigations across the EU, combined with potential unpredictability of the locus of an ultimate resolution or trial, will mean that these substantive and procedural divergences are likely to raise considerable difficulties, particularly for legal entities. The EPPO should therefore quickly establish guidelines on how to approach … Read more

The independence of the judiciary has been a recurrent issue in the case law of the Court of Justice of the European Union in recent years. In particular, in 2019 and 2020, in a series of new cases concerning the status of national public prosecutors, the Court examined the level of independence necessary for public prosecutors to fall within the concept of an “issuing judicial authority” within the meaning of Article 6(1) of the Framework Decision on the European Arrest Warrant. After an exposition of these cases, this article seeks to investigate the impact of this case law on the EU criminal justice system. Crucially, it is argued that the new case law is likely to change the EAW dynamics that the Member States, especially those that have conferred upon their public prosecutors’ offices the power to issue EAWs, have been relying on so far and, as a consequence, the … Read more

With the increase in volume and importance of cross-border investigations in the EU, ensuring the admissibility of evidence gathered in another Member State at trial is crucial − both for efficient law enforcement and for the protection of fundamental rights. At present, the rules on the collection, use, and admissibility of evidence are left to the laws of national criminal procedure of the Member States. These differ extensively as to the collection, use, admissibility, and nullity of evidence and thereby act as an obstacle to the use of cross-border evidence. In order to overcome the present difficulties, this article argues in favour of a new legislative proposal based on Art. 82(2) subsection 2 TFEU laying down common rules for the admissibility and exclusion of evidence in criminal proceedings. The article starts with a short description of the problem and a summary of the current legal framework before turning to the … Read more

The banking system is often at the epicentre of large-scale financial crimes. Recent scandals involving major European credit institutions questioned the role of banking regulators in supporting law enforcement agencies and revealed the weakness of the current interaction between the European Central Bank (ECB) and national actors. Despite its ostensible coherence, the Single Supervisory Mechanism legal framework can prove problematic in terms of efficiency and adequacy in facing global financial crime. This article explores the specific case of information exchange between banking supervisors and criminal investigative authorities at national level. After a descriptive overview of the ECB reporting duties of potential criminal offences, we examine the possibility of a more coherent information exchange system, where a direct channel of communication between the ECB and criminal law enforcement agencies could serve as a better integrated strategy.