Pregledni rad
https://doi.org/10.54070/hljk.30.1.4
The “Hard Core” and “Periphery” of Criminal Law in the Jurisprudence of the European Court of Human Rights
Nikša Vojvoda
; Pravni fakultet Sveučilišta u Zagrebu, Zagreb, Hrvatska
Sažetak
The European Court of Human Rights has for decades been dealing with procedural guarantees in quasi-criminal proceedings (e.g. misdemeanour or administrative-penal proceedings). The jurisprudence of the Court can be divided into two periods. The first began with the judgment Engel and others v. the Netherlands where the Court interpreted the notion of criminal charge (i.e. offence) independently from its classification in national law. According to such an interpretation, even a formally non-criminal offence may be viewed by the Court as criminal. During that period, the following rule was applicable: if a charge (offence) is deemed criminal, then all the procedural guarantees that the Convention foresees for criminal proceedings have to be respected. The beginning of the second period was marked by the judgment Jussila v. Finland where the Court developed a new standard according to which guarantees from Article 6 of the Convention do not have to be applied in their full stringency if the case does not belong to the hard core of criminal law. This standard was a turning point in the jurisprudence of the Court concerning procedural guarantees in quasi-criminal proceedings. However, it remained unclear how to delineate the hard core from the periphery of criminal law. This paper analyses the mentioned landmark case and looks at how the criteria used by the Court to differentiate between the hard core and the periphery of criminal law have developed in subsequent cases. The relevant post-Jussila jurisprudence is divided into three branches. The first contains cases such as Mtchedlishvili v. Georgia which belong to the hard core of criminal law. Quasi-criminal cases that are not part of the hard core of criminal law belong to the second branch (e.g. Segame SA v. France). Finally, the third branch consists of civil law
cases in which the Court has invoked the “Jussila mantra” (one of them being Carmel Saliba
v. Malta). Finally, the article explains that although there are some general rules on how the
Court discerns the hard core from the periphery of criminal law, its jurisprudence is far from
consistent.
Ključne riječi
Hrčak ID:
313013
URI
Datum izdavanja:
30.11.2023.
Posjeta: 243 *