Judgments rendered in absentia are at the core of the ordre public discussion as has shown the “Melloni case.” The issue has high practical relevance as a possible barrier to judicial cooperation in criminal matters. The following article investigates the solutions that have been found in European extradition law. In particular, it examines whether the new Article 4a of the Framework Decision on the European Arrest Warrant (introduced by Framework Decision 2009/299/JHA “on trials in absentia”) indeed meets – as many critics doubt – the standards of the European Convention on Human Rights and the ECtHR’s case law on the accused’s right to be present at his/her trial. The problem has come to the fore since Germany is currently in the process of implementing the 2009 Framework Decision. The article concludes that the new provision regarding the European Union’s extradition scheme can be “brought in line” via the means of … Read more

This paper was commissioned in order to contribute to the crucial research conducted by the Max Planck Institute for Foreign and International Criminal law in the field of the financing of terrorism. It presents in a systematic way the main legal framework and counter-terrorism policies in Greece, as well as the activities of criminal justice authorities, police agencies, and other (private) actors involved in the fight against the financing of terrorist activity. It shows that Greece has implemented most of the major international counter-terrorism provisions in a coherent yet not uncritical way as far as their content is concerned, despite the ongoing controversy regarding the role of the traditional protective principles of criminal law in these fairly new fields of criminal investigation and prosecution.
It has not, however, been possible to avoid the sometimes unfeasible parallel existence of multiple legal norms, such as the substantive penal rules defining terrorism and … 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

The ongoing spread of social networking pages such as Facebook and Google+ recently sparked the interest of German security agencies. In a statement of 14 July 2011, the federal government acknowledged the relevance and conduct of criminal investigations on social networking pages. The government takes the view that the pseudonymous participation does in general not require a specific legal basis since there is no legitimate expectation of privacy on websites which do not require a verification of identity by registration. This view is partly shared in legal writing and refers to a relatively vague section in a recent judgment of the federal constitutional court. The article analyses that argument and reveals that it is too undifferentiated for a transfer to social networks and thus not in accordance with the constitutional requirements in Germany.