Combating economic and financial criminality at the European level

Abstract

The procedures concerning the protection of European financial interests are contestably of first interest for the European Union. The central issue is a matter of residency of the compatibility of criminal law with European law, which infers two levels of analysis: the etatic approach and the communitarian approach respectively. To this extent, the European Community Treatises, on one side, introduce steadily the working instruments particular both in the matters of judicial cooperation and of criminal law in what concerns the protection of the EU financial interests. On the other side, the adjustment of communitarian politics and the insurance of their effective implementation has lead to a new separation of competences between the Union and the Member States, by such means consolidating the juridical instruments of action of the Union in the plan of combating criminality of all kind, including economical and financial. The attempt of constitution of a criminal protection of EU financial interests lasts since the '70, and the idea has been once more brought into attention, by the assembly of treatises successively adopted in Maastricht, Amsterdam, Nice and Lisbon which represent the legal framework of the European Union of our present days. The Lisbon Treaty brings a new dimensioning to communitarian law, such issue regarding the compatibility of criminal law to the juridical communitarian order persisting in being on top among debates and developments at a European level in what concerns the effective protection of EU financial interests.