This article examines the European Union’s role and obligations under the United Nations Convention against Corruption (UNCAC), to which the EU acceded in 2008 as the only regional economic integration organisation. It first outlines the scope and structure of UNCAC and its implementation architecture, including the Conference of the States Parties and the peer-review Implementation Review Mechanism. The article then analyses the specific legal position of the EU: its declaration of competences (pre- and post-Lisbon), the partial and evolving nature of its UNCAC obligations, and the practical consequences for representation and voting. Particular attention is paid to the EU’s failure so far to join the UNCAC review mechanism, despite being a State Party, and to the legal, institutional, and political challenges this raises – notably the need to update the EU’s declaration of competence, to define which provisions and institutions should be reviewed, and to arrange an appropriate review set-up. … Read more

This article analyses the criminal offence of unjustified set-off in Italian tax law, introduced alongside the offence of non-payment of VAT by Legislative Decree No. 74/2000 (Sects. 10-ter and 10-quater) to counter increasingly common forms of tax evasion. It explains set-off as a legal mechanism (vertical vs. horizontal set-off under Sect. 17 of Legislative Decree No. 241/1997) and shows how the abuse of horizontal set-off through non-existent or non-applicable tax credits enables concealed non-payment of taxes, including in VAT carousel fraud schemes. The contribution examines the constitutive elements of the offence: the use of fictitious or ineligible credits via Form F24, failure to pay amounts exceeding €50,000 per tax period, the required mens rea (including contingent intent), the temporal moment of commission, and the position of intermediaries. It further outlines the parallel administrative offence regime, the speciality principle governing the interaction between criminal and administrative sanctions, and the mitigating effects … Read more

This article analyses the complex relationship between administrative and criminal sanctions in Polish law, focusing on tax and social security cases and the constitutional ne bis in idem principle. It centres on the 2011 judgment of the Polish Constitutional Tribunal (P 90/08), which held that the 75% lump-sum tax on undisclosed income under the Personal Income Tax Act is a “special type of tax” rather than a criminal sanction, and thus its cumulative application alongside fiscal-criminal liability under the tax penal code does not violate ne bis in idem. The article reconstructs the Tribunal’s reasoning on the preventive and compensatory nature of such tax measures, contrasts it with dissenting views emphasising excessive repressiveness, and situates the ruling within earlier Constitutional Tribunal case law on VAT “additional tax obligations” and other double-sanction scenarios. It further explores the emergence of an “administrative-criminal law” sphere in which economic sanctions imposed by administrative authorities … Read more

The European Commission adopted on 11 July 2012 a proposal for a Directive of the European Parliament and of the Council on the protection of the financial interests of the Union by criminal law. In its 2011 Communication on the protection of the financial interests of the European Union by criminal law and by administrative investigations, the Commission highlighted the need to adopt new legal instruments on criminal-law protection of the Union’s financial interests. Based on an analysis of the current challenges and shortcomings in the practice of criminal-law protection by the judicial authorities in the Member States, this communication… Read more

The creation of a European Public Prosecutor’s Office seems now to be in sight, at least from an EU-constitutional point of view. However, there appear to be two major stumbling blocks, which can be summarised as austerity and complexity. Within the climate of financial austerity in the EU, the Zeitgeist provokes considerations of reduction and economy rather than expansion and creation of new EU institutions on a vertical scale. Finding a politically palatable solution will require not only political will (and/or a sudden event precipitating the need for an EPPO) but will also call for creativity in execution. All the… Read more

Les débats très vifs sur la création d’un espace judiciaire commun, et tout spécialement les études et les nombreux séminaires organisés à partir de la moitié des années 90 ont finalement porté leurs fruits. Il y a dix ans, les propositions du « Corpus Juris portant dispositions pénales pour la protection des intérêts financiers de l’Union européenne », document dont la première version a été publiée en 19971, ouvrait la perspective audacieuse d’un espace judiciaire pénal commun. L’espace envisagé se fondait essentiellement sur le principe novateur de territorialité unique européenne ainsi que sur la création d’une autorité commune compétente pour… Read more