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UPDATES OF THE ROMANIAN CRIMINAL LAW IN ACCORDANCE WITH RELEVANT EU LAW PROVISIONS
As a part of European Union (”EU”), Romania regularly updates its legislation to reflect the direction provided by the European legal framework.
One field of primary importance which is ever-changing is that of cross-border organized crime. Given the specificity of such actions, the EU has taken an interest in creating a climate of cooperation meant to ensure fast and efficient measures designed to prevent, discourage, detect or sanction cross-border crimes.
Such acts meant to establish common rules in the field of organised crime are Directive 2014/42/EU of the European Parliament and of the Council on freezing and confiscation of instruments and proceeds of criminal offences committed in the European Union, and Directive 2016/343/EU of the European Parliament and Council on the strengthening of certain aspects of the presumption of innocence and the right to be present at the trial in criminal proceedings.
Therefore, whereas criminal offences must be sanctioned and prevented, it is also important not to overlook the rights of the parties involved and the presumption of innocence which is a fundamental human right provided by the European Convention of Human Rights.
In this context, Law no. 228/2020 for the modification and completion of certain normative acts in the criminal field to transpose Directives of the European Union (“Law no. 228/2020”) was adopted in order to align the provisions of the Romanian legislation with the direction set forth by the EU.
Law no. 228/2020 brings a series of changes to the Romanian Criminal Code, Criminal Procedure Code, as well as to other laws in the field of criminal law.
Probably the most important amendments made by Law no. 228/2020 are in connection with extended confiscation, which was already regulated by the Romanian Criminal Code.
As a matter of principle, for extended confiscation to be undertaken, the following general conditions should be met:
In concrete terms, the novelty elements brought by Law no. 228/2020 are the following:
Another important amendment of the Criminal Procedural Code consists in the fact that, the prosecution is now obliged to inform the suspect about any new deeds which led to the extension of the investigation, or about the change of the legal classification of the offence.
In accordance with the previous legal provisions, the prosecution was only obliged to inform the suspect about the extension of the criminal investigation and not about the change of legal qualification as well. From this standpoint, the new legislation represents a notable progress.
Law no. 228/2020 also brought noteworthy changes regarding the suspension of the criminal investigation such as:
The same principles as those described above were provided in the case of staying the criminal trial before the court, the only difference being that the stay ordered by the judge may be contested by the interested party (in 24 hours from the delivery of the ruling regarding the stay for the presented parties or 48 hours for the missing parties).
As one may easily guess, these changes represent a progress and are particularly useful in the current context of the worldwide pandemic spread, even though Directive 2016/343/EU was adopted in 2016 and its implementation was long overdue.
Law no. 228/2020 also provides some additional prerogatives for the NAACA such as:
Even though the transposition of the Directives was long overdue, Law no. 228/2020 represents a progress in the field of Romanian criminal law in respect both to the recovery of damages caused by criminal activity, as well as suspect rights.
It however remains to be seen how these important changes will be implemented by the authorities and if they will give rise to any abuse.
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