Corporate criminal liability in EU Directives: An overview of the EU discipline
/This article focuses on the corporate criminal liability regime introduced by EU directives harmonising criminal law. Liability of legal persons has become an essential tool in preventing and sanctioning serious crimes and European criminal law has progressively developed a common approach. The more recent legal instruments adopted by the EU strengthen the obligation for Member States to adopt a common standard and minimise the risk of forum shopping. This paper aims to analyse the European Union’s approach to corporate liability, investigating the nature of such liability and its contents, by focusing in particular on the criteria for attributing this liability to entities and the sanction provisions. Recent EU legislative acts contain some crucial innovations that appear to go beyond the minimum standards and place more emphasis on the organisational fault of the corporation, as well as the post-delictum re-organisation.
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