Principi penalistici e giurisprudenza della Corte di giustizia dell'Unione europea

Serious forms of crime have abandoned the merely national dimension and become transnational: think of terrorism, organized crime, computer crime, trafficking in human beings, just to name a few. In order to adequately fight this kind of phenomena, criminal law should do the same and not be so tied to the merely national dimension. European citizens ask for security and their request should be interpreted as expressing the need for regulatory interventions in the criminal field. Of course they deserve certainty as to the fact that appropriate sanctioning measures will be taken by all the Member States of the European Union (EU) in order to effectively deal with crime. Anyway, one should remember that criminal law must not be dissociated from the protection of fundamental rights because that would result in the denial of basic values inherent in democratic societies, first of all the rule of law. Then, the need for an axiological horizon and principles which found and limit the EU criminal system arises. So, my research question is: what are the axiological horizon and the principles which found and limit the EU criminal system? This work focuses on the precedents of the European Court of Justice (ECJ), so on a judge-made law whose development has basically been made possible thanks to the preliminary ruling procedure. No one denies that case law should remain bound to the specific case, inasmuch the extension of the ratio decidendi to other cases always is the result of selective operations. However, the presentation of the topics in this PhD thesis shows not only that the judgments of the ECJ in the criminal field are numerous, but also that they are characterized by the progressive emergence of a criminal law consciousness, a criminal law sensibility, and the will to create a system which is intrinsically consistent. The case law of the European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR) is also taken into account in light of the phenomenon called cross-fertilization. The works of Italian and European legal scholars are considered too. So, after an Introduction on the relationship between globalization, crime, and competences of the EU in criminal matters, the thesis deals with the concept of criminal law (First Chapter), the principles of legality of criminal offences and penalties (Second Chapter), offensiveness (Third Chapter), guilt (Fourth Chapter), and proportionality (Fifth Chapter) in the case law of the ECJ. In the Conclusion, an assessment of the results is provided. As problematic as it seems, the search for an axiological horizon and principles of EU criminal law has proven fruitful. In the first chapter, I found out that it is possible to identify two notions of criminal law which have been developed by the ECJ in the last twenty-five years. According to the former, criminal law is that branch of law which aims at protecting the values that are deemed fundamental by national communities. According to the latter, the criminal nature of a sanction should be asserted in light of the so-called Engel criteria as developed by the EctHR (legal classification of the offence under national law, very nature of the offence, and degree of severity of the sanction). The latter approach is now prevailing. At first sight, they do not look so different, but I think the latter should be preferred because of the different axiological horizon. The former approach relies on the values that are deemed fundamental by national communities, while the latter one implicitly relies on the European Convention on Human Rights. So, it is characterized by an inclusive dimension which may lack in the former one, since fundamental national values may not be consistent with human rights (think of the case of Hungary). The second chapter is devoted to the principle of legality of criminal offences and penalties and takes into account five major issues: the interpretative incidence of EU directives in criminal matters (the prohibition of determining or aggravating the liability in criminal law and the duty of conforming interpretation); the interpretative incidence of EU regulations and frameworks decisions (the duty of conforming interpretation); the integrating incidence of EU law (how EU law shapes the meaning of national legislation); the disapplying incidence (in case national provisions are not consistent with EU law, with in bonam partem effects); the lex mitior principle. The analysis led to the conclusion that the principle of legality of criminal offences and penalties is not dead, as someone said, but has adapted to national and international realities which have changed. The third chapter deals with the principle of offensiveness and is divided into two parts. In the first part, an analysis is provided with reference to those judgments (Amsterdam Bulb, Commission v Hellenic Republic) in which the ECJ ruled that some legal interests which belong to the EU (above all, the financial ones) should be protected by the Member States under conditions, both procedural and substantive, which are analogous to those applicable to infringements of national law of a similar nature and importance and which, in any event, make the penalty effective, proportionate and dissuasive, in light of the principle of sincere cooperation. In the second part, recent judgments concerning criminal law and immigration law (El Dridi, Achughbabian, Sagor) are considered in order to show how the ECJ has questioned national lawmakers' choices which were inconsistent with the principle of sincere cooperation. The fourth chapter is dedicated to the principle of guilt and, more specifically, to six topics: The distinction between intentionally-committed and unintentionally-committed offences, the concept of intentional offence, the concept of negligence, strict criminal liability, Ignorantia legis non excusat, and the concept of force majeure. In the fifth chapter, the case law concerning the principle of proportionality is taken into consideration by highlighting how the ECJ has solved the cases in which a clash between national regulations criminal in nature and one of the four fundamental freedoms had occurred. It is quite interesting to notice that the solution given by the Court has always aimed at finding a balance point between the values at stake by identifying some conditions under which the four fundamental freedoms may be sacrificed. In conclusion, the gradual recognition of competences in criminal matters to the European Union is the result of the emergence of the political identity of the Union, since the creation of criminal law – both at the international and national level – requires the prior identification of a system of shared fundamental values, which are expressive of an identity. Some legal scholars, in analyzing the events and reasons for the failure of the draft European Constitution, spoke of the absence of a European people characterized by common ethnicity, culture, society and language. Such reasoning has been discussed among criminal law scholars for a long time with reference to European criminal law, since the unification of criminal law presupposes the cultural unification of Europe. The point is that, without assuming a world legal commonality, one can hypothise a European legal commonality. In my opinion, it is very convincing the reasoning of those who state that the foundation of human rights must be sought not – or not only – in the human nature, but also – and most of all – in the history and culture of peoples, considering, at least at the European level, the set of ideas and principles of the tradition of the old continent, through the reference to the Christian roots of Europe and the Enlightenment. So, those values already exist. Undoubtedly, the culture of the Europeans is the culture of human rights, and the lingua franca of Europe is the language of rights as declined in the Nice Charter and the European Convention of Human Rights. As demonstrated in the thesis, the jurisprudential experience of the Court of Justice has been mature enough to get to deal with the issues of protection of fundamental rights and, most of all, the protection of those rights through criminal law. The Court did so by progressively becoming aware of the nature of that branch of law – as explained in the first chapter – which has been considered not as a simple tool of repression, but as a means through which affirm and reaffirm freedoms. I believe that can reasonably be confirmed by turning the attention to the essence of the principles of legality, offensiveness, guilt, proportionality. As a matter of fact, they represent the limits to the use of criminal methods of repression, the observance of which leads to the outcome of legitimization and re-legitimization of criminal law, both at the national and international level; they indicate the existence of criminal awareness and sensitivity of the Court; they mark the road that will lead to the final result of the emergence of a criminal law of the European Union, made up of both a general part and a special part, both inspired, supported and controlled by those principles.

Il testo è così organizzato: Introduzione: nella quale si trattano le questioni relative al riconoscimento di una competenza in materia penale in favore dell'Unione europea alla luce dei problemi posti dal fenomeno della globalizzazione. Si provvede altresì all'illustrazione della metodologia della ricerca, basata sull'analisi delle sentenze della Corte di giustizia dell'Unione europea e, ove necessario, della Corte europea dei diritti dell'uomo. Capitolo I: dedicato al concetto di diritto penale come definito da parte degli avvocati generali nelle loro conclusioni e quindi adottato da parte della Corte di giustizia dell'Unione europea nelle proprie pronunce. Esso assume rilievo in quanto delimita l'orizzonte assiologico di riferimento, rappresentato, in un primo momento, dai valori fondamentali delle singole comunità statali, per essere individuato in seguito nella Convenzione europea dei diritti dell'uomo, in un'ottica di cross-fertilization fondata sul richiamo alla sentenza della Corte EDU Engel e altri c. Paesi Bassi (1976) e sulla giurisprudenza sviluppatasi successivamente. Capitolo II: nel quale è affrontato il tema del principio di legalità, considerato a partire dai diversi angoli prospettici dell'incidenza interpretativa delle fonti comunitarie / dell'Unione europea (regolamenti, direttive e decisioni quadro) sul diritto penale interno (soprattutto con riferimento al divieto di determinare o aggravare la responsabilità penale e l'obbligo di interpretazione conforme relativi alle direttive), dell'incidenza integratrice (il rapporto tra normativa interna e normativa dell'Unione quanto alla nozione di rifiuto), dell'incidenza disapplicatrice (la disapplicazione della normativa penale statale contrastante con quella europea con efficacia in bonam partem) e del principio di lex mitior, per quindi volgere l'attenzione al problematico rapporto tra legalità europea ed erosione della sovranità statale. Capitolo III: dedicato al principio di offensività, nel quale si analizzano due orientamenti giurisprudenziali. Il primo, a partire dal principio di leale cooperazione, ha condotto all'affermazione dell'obbligo per gli Stati membri di predisporre per gli interessi comunitari / dell'Unione europea una tutela analoga a quella stabilita per i corrispondenti interessi a livello statale, facendo ricorso a sanzioni effettive, proporzionate e dissuasive (sentenze Amsterdam Bulb, Commissione c. Grecia); il secondo ha invece portato a escludere che scelte di criminalizzazione operate da parte dei legislatori nazionali possano impedire la realizzazione dell'effetto utile del diritto dell'Unione europea, con un conseguente e tendenziale abbandono dello strumento di repressione penale nell'ambito del diritto dell'immigrazione (sentenze El Dridi, Achughbabian, Sagor). Capitolo IV: nel quale si tratta del principio di colpevolezza, dando conto di una giurisprudenza puntiforme che ha individuato la distinzione tra reati intenzionali e non intenzionali, definito i concetti di intenzionalità e negligenza grave, affermato e quindi superato la responsabilità penale oggettiva, cercato di valorizzare la regula iuris secondo cui ignorantia legis non excusat ed esplicitato una nozione di forza maggiore. Capitolo V: dedicato al principio di proporzionalità, nel quale si considera come la Corte di giustizia, posta dinanzi a situazioni caratterizzate da un contrasto tra la normativa penale interna, da un lato, e una delle quattro libertà fondamentali riconosciute nell'ordinamento dell'Unione europea, dall'altro, abbia valorizzato detto principio, in un senso non esclusivamente protezionistico, cercando anzi di individuare un punto di equilibrio tra valori tutelati, valori sacrificati e mezzi attraverso i quali realizzare la tutela dei primi e il sacrificio dei secondi. Conclusioni: nelle quali si sottolinea come l'Unione europea sia ormai diventata un soggetto avente natura costituzionale, dato che il processo di integrazione ha raggiunto il livello più autenticamente costituzionale, ossia la tutela dei diritti fondamentali, il quale rappresenta l'espressione più alta della sovranità e l'elemento principale di legittimazione di essa, cosa che sembra dunque militare a favore di una definitiva attribuzione di competenza penale alle istituzioni dell'Unione, almeno per quel che riguarda la protezione di beni giuridici propriamente europei.