European Economic Criminal Law (Elective)

The course firstly aims to familiarize students with basic concepts of European and particularly EU (economic) criminal law and to address core problems related to the treatment of modern economic crime by means of substantive criminal law. The historical development and sources of European and in particular EU criminal law, the liberal guarantees that surround it, and the effects it has on national criminal law and on the general formulation of anti-criminal policy, particularly following the Treaty of Lisbon, which granted the European Union broad criminal law powers, are examined. The content of important Council of Europe conventions as well as key European Union legal tools relating to substantive criminal law in areas such as fraud against the EU's financial interests, money laundering, corruption and cybercrime is then analyzed.

Furthermore, the course aims to analyze selected Council of Europe conventions as well as the main legal tools of the European Union relating to procedural criminal law and play a key role in the prosecution of economic crime in the modern transnational and EU environment. In this context, the most important EU tools currently governing cross-border cooperation between national prosecuting and judicial authorities are analyzed by implementing the principle of mutual recognition of judgments and orders (e.g. European Arrest Warrant, European Investigative Order), the structure, responsibilities and way in which EU supranational bodies operate, in particular the European Public Prosecutor's Office, are examined and the rights of criminal persons, in particular those of the accused, are systematically analyzed, as they acquire meaning and complement each other within the framework of the modern multi-level system for the protection of fundamental rights (EU Charter of Fundamental Rights/Court of Justice of the European Union, European Convention on Human Rights/ECHR, national laws/national courts).