Artikel: Environmental Democracy and Judicial Cooperation in Environmental Matters

Judicial cooperation in environmental matters is a key aspect of the move towards environmental democracy undertaken by the European Union. This Article presents the preliminary findings about the kind of behaviour that national courts can show with their judgments once they received a preliminary ruling from the Court of Justice of the European Union, so-called follow-up judgments. It first shows the results of the latest two empirical studies, namely that Italian and Belgian courts tend to cooperate fully with the Court of Justice in environmental matters. Besides, only one new category of judicial cooperation is highlighted, that of suspended cooperation. The unfolding of the categories of judicial cooperation seems to have reached the saturation point.

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Artikel: Improving Defence Rights

The rights of individuals in criminal procedures have been prominent on the agenda since the entry into force of the Lisbon Treaty. In this article, the authors take stock of the state of the art, evaluating the content and implementation of the 2009 “Stockholm Roadmap Directives” (ABC Directives). Furthermore, they identify the main challenges for the years ahead. The work is organised around three, closely connected issues, i.e. the need for additional minimum rules in the area of cross-border cooperation proceedings, the need for additional minimum rules on defence rights and procedural safeguards beyond the first generation of the Roadmap Directives and the need for minimum rules on remedies, in cases where rights have been violated.

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Conclusie AG HvJ EU: Unierecht staat bestraffing 'self-laundering' toe

Conclusie AG HvJ EU G. Hogan 14 januari 2021, C‑790/19

Artikel 1, lid 2, onder a), van richtlijn 2005/60/EG van het Europees Parlement en de Raad van 26 oktober 2005 tot voorkoming van het gebruik van het financiële stelsel voor het witwassen van geld en de financiering van terrorisme dient aldus te worden uitgelegd dat het niet in de weg staat aan een nationale regeling op grond waarvan degene die daden pleegt die het witwasdelict opleveren, dezelfde persoon kan zijn als degene die het onderliggende delict pleegt.

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Artikel: Ne bis in idem in European Law

This Article analyses the recent divergence between the two European Courts on the application of ne bis in idem to double-track procedures from the perspective of judicial dialogue and constitutional pluralism. Although major efforts have been made towards convergence over the past decades, recent case law shows that the potential for conflict – and, possibly, incompatibility – remains wherever the incentive to follow the lead of one authority is insufficient. Pushed to find solutions by the resistance of certain national courts to their converging standards, the European Court of Human Rights and the Court of Justice have chosen very different paths to reach a similar, but not identical, compromise solution.

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Artikel: Towards a European Right to Claim Innocence?

Although there is a European right to fair trial, a presumption of innocence, and a right to appeal, there is no European human rights norm that obligates Member States to allow former suspects to contest their convictions. In a time of growing harmonisation and comparison of criminal procedure approaches between European countries, and in a time in which new scientific options to gather and analyse evidence were developed, the question rises whether there should also be an EU right to claim innocence. And if so, what should it entail?

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