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The Aarhus Convention (1998) organizes the exercise of public access to environmental information, taking part in decision making, and access to justice in environmental issues, as procedural safeguards of the right to a healthy and ecologically balanced environment. The effectivity of the right to environmental information bares significant limitations, both doctrinal and political, and has met several obstacles, mostly technical and cultural; such aspects concern especially the definition of environmental „information”, the conditions of accessing them, the exceptions, the administrative proceedings, the access to justice in this field and its results etc. In explaining its contents and amplifying the efficiency of this right a special part is played by the findings, conclusions and recommendations of the Compliance Committee for examining the enforcement of the Convention created in 2002 that can file complaints from Member States and non-governmental organizations, to evaluate, in a non-conflictual, non-judiciary and consultative manner, whether the treaty is correctly enforced by the Parties. Having no decision power, the Compliance Committee issues, following the examination, only a recommendation, addressed to the Reunion of Parties, that is always approved by the Member States. -
The phrase actio libera in causa designates that situation in which the perpetrator, at the time of committing a deed stipulated by the criminal law, was in a situation that excludes the imputable character of the deed. However, it must be emphasized that, at a previous moment, when the perpetrator was not under the incidence of such causes, he triggered or allowed the emergence of some states of fact that would eliminate the imputable character of the deed. In such a hypothesis, the criminal doctrine from Romania is unanimous in accepting that the person who causes his own state of incapacity will be liable under the criminal law. In order to argue the possibility that a person, at the time of committing a typical action or inaction, be liable under the criminal law, the authors of criminal law in our country have adopted the model of exception or extraordinary imputation. According to this system, the perpetrator will be liable under the criminal law for causing his own state of incapacity. Thus, the imputability, in the case of the construction of actio libera in causa, will not be analyzed at the time of committing the criminal deed, but in relation to the moment when the perpetrator caused his state of incapacity. The construction actio libera in causa, from our point of view, covers only certain hypotheses in which the perpetrator creates the appearance of existence of a cause of imputability (intoxication, irresponsibility, physical or moral constraint), and not those hypotheses, in which the perpetrator provokes the existence of a justifying cause.
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The article analyzes the refusal of the convicted person to be subject to the medical examination upon the arrival to the penitentiary, from the perspective of the Romanian legislation, in correlation with the international instruments regarding the rights of detainees, and legislative solutions adopted by other European states, arguing some proposals de lege ferenda meant to facilitate the fulfilment of the positive obligation of the state to prevent the spread of contagious diseases in the penitentiary environment. The objectives of the article are to determine whether the detainee has the right to refuse the medical examination, whether the Romanian legislation complies with the requirements of the international instruments regarding the protection of the rights of the detainees, respectively whether they have similarities with the legislations of other European states; at the same time, the aim is to identify some rules applicable to the penitentiary system, derived from the case law developed by the ECtHR/Court and from international documents, in relation to the right to health and the relationship between the autonomy of the detainees as persons and the prison environment.
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The voting right of the shareholder at the general meeting of the shareholders is an accessory right to the ownership of the shares, by which the shareholder protects his interests and exercises the supervision and control over the management of the company. It is a true prerogative of the shareholder’s access to the substantiation of business decisions, which materialize through the will of the company. The exercise of the right to vote is governed by the principle of good faith and the principle of proportionality, but may be limited in the situation of the conflict of interests between the shareholder and the company. The shareholder in conflict of interests with the company is obliged to abstain from the vote, if by his vote it contributes to the formation of the majority of a decision with harmful consequences for the company. The situation of conflict of interests and the sanction of non-observance of the obligation to abstain from voting cannot be determined by the other shareholders, but only by the court. If, through the decision adopted with the participation of the shareholder in conflict of interests, a prejudice has occurred, the applicable sanction is the commitment of its liability. Such a decision is valid, but it can also be cancelled, provided that it is the result of a majority abuse. The same fate has the decision adopted by the minority shareholders with the abusive removal of the shareholder’s vote supposed to be in conflict of interests.
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The EU is a union of states and citizens. The legal nature of this Union is disputable. However, most of the scholars admit that it works on federal bases; in the Brussels language called „the communitarian method”. If the EU is a federation, it is a sui generis federation of sovereign states. Those states have transferred to the European transnational institutions, they have established by their joint will, the power to exercise on their behalf, to their benefit and in their common interests some of their national competences. By doing this the respective states did not give up their sovereignty, but simply decided to exercise parts of it in common, for the sake of their common security. Likewise, they did not abrogate their Constitutions, but it was precisely because those Constitutions allowed them to enter such international agreements that they have signed the Treaty of the European Union (TEU) and the Treaty on the Functioning of the European Union (TFEU). That explains why the above-mentioned founding legal instruments of the EU were adopted and later modified by and within intergovernmental conferences, as well as why they had to be ratified by all national parliaments of the signatory states. Those treaties include the principle of „attribution”, which means that the European institutions could not have, accept or enforce any power which has been not explicitly attributed to them by every and all member states. This „attribution” is achieved and could only be achieved in full respect and in complete observance of the respective national Constitutions of the member states.
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The article addresses the issue related to the manner to reach an effective cooperation between two judicial institutions which play a very important role in the context of ensuring respect for the rights and freedoms of the citizen, respectively between the European Court of Human Rights and the Court of Justice of the European Union. The study starts from the premise according to which the creation of the Single European Area of Freedom, Security and Justice, through the conclusion of international treaties, and subsequently the accession thereto by the states on the European continent and the third countries was not only of a nature to bring benefits to the citizens, by exercising the right to free movement and its derivatives at socio-economic level, but also to generate shortcomings, determined by the cross-border nature of the criminality, acquired in the light of free movement precisely. The relationship between the two jurisdictional institutions is viewed in the context of international cooperation in criminal matters, with broad references to the principles enshrined in the European Union law and which have the role of simplifying and intensifying this cooperation. Among the principles analyzed we indicate: the Principle of pre-eminence of international treaties and conventions over the national law, the Principle of mutual recognition of criminal judicial decisions and of mutual trust between states, the Principle ne bis in idem. The article also contains references to another important aspect resulting from the realities of international judicial cooperation in criminal matters, namely to the fact that, although each Member State of the European Union is a party to the European Convention, the Union, as an international organization, is not a party to the Convention, which means that European citizens cannot file a complaint to the European Court of Human Rights against an institution of the Union, when they consider that any of their rights enshrined in the Convention has been violated.
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The paper analyzes the conditions for exercising the revision in the criminal trial, respectively the judgments subject to revision, the category of persons who can exercise it, the time limits of declaration, the form in which the application and its content must be made. The study relates to the case law of the national courts before and after the entry into force of the new Criminal Procedure Code, as well as to the relevant provisions of other European legislations. At the same time, there are considered the provisions of the Draft Law for amending and completing the Criminal Procedure Code adopted in the summer of 2018, respectively PL-x No 373/2018.
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This paper analyzes the principle of mutual recognition as a method of legal integration specific to EU law but also, in the form of Full Faith and Credit and Extradition Clauses, in the U.S. Constitution and law. The article presents a brief historical perspective on this principle, of its roots in Anglo-Saxon law and its direct continuity in U.S. law, but also of taking over, through legal hybridization, in combination with the harmonization method, in EU law. The work analyses: the function of legal integration of the principle, as an essential component of both American federalism and the EU legal order, its fundamental characteristics and its conditions of application and the topic of Interstate Extradition Clause versus European Arrest Warrant. The Articles of Confederation, the U.S. Constitution, federal laws, uniform laws, the case-law of the U.S. Supreme Court and other U.S. courts, altogether with the EU fundamental treaties, the legal acts of the European Union and the jurisprudence of the Court of Justice of European Union were considered. Numerous similarities have emerged from the comparative analysis, but also some differences, coming from the different paradigms of American federalism and, respectively, of the EU legal order.
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In the present study, the author analyses the provisions newly introduced by the Law No 129/2019 in the matter of the real beneficiary in the case of the fiduciary operation regulated by Articles 773–791 of the Civil Code. The provisions regarding the real beneficiary constitute the transposition into national law of two directives, namely Directive (EU) 2015/849 [amended by Directive (EU) 2018/843)], respectively Directive (EU) 2016/2.258. Analysing the versions in several official languages of the European Union (in particular the English and French languages) in comparison with the Romanian version, the author comes to the conclusion of an insufficiently analysed translation and in reference to the applicable legal provisions regarding the Romanian version, which does not sufficiently study the substantial differences between the fiduciary operation and the equivalent of the Anglo-Saxon law, namely the trust. This results in a difference between the English and French versions, respectively the Romanian version.
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The unpredictability involves the intervention of the judge in a contractual legal relationship. Intellectual property can be considered a „laboratory” in which the intervention of the judge in the agreement of the parties has always been allowed. Without any connection with the unpredictability, in patent law there are legal mechanisms that allow the court to intervene to complete the contract regarding the quantum of the price in order to encourage the exploitation of the invention. In this hypothesis, the parties agree to contract, they do so, setting even the object of the contract, less the sale price. In other cases, the parties are obliged to contract by law, the court being required to intervene in the contractual mechanism established by law to determine the price. In Romania it cannot be argued that under the influence of the previous Civil Code the legislator has ruled on the non-application de plano of the unpredictability and that he would have been in favour of its application in certain special laws, such as the one from the field of intellectual property, because the reason for the judge’s intervention in the agreement of the parties is to favour the exploitation of intellectual creations, encouraging creativity. In the new Civil Code the conditions of the unpredictability are: 1. the existence of an excessive onerosity caused by an exceptional change (out of the ordinary, and not an ordinary one, simple or routine) and unforeseen (unpredictable), including as extension, of the circumstances existing at the conclusion of the contract. Excessive onerosity represents a contractual imbalance in relation to the initial contractual balance, which must exist as long as neither of the parties’ benefits can have a significantly higher value than the other, in the light of the regulation of the injury in the new Civil Code.
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This article analyses the problem of international criminal liability for offences against cultural heritage. The author has considered three offences against cultural values: smuggling of cultural values, destruction of cultural goods and theft of cultural goods. The investigation of the offences against cultural values includes a number of aspects: the nature of the offences against cultural values; the advantages of the international or national character of the liability for the offences against cultural values; the circumstances of committing offences against cultural assets (for example the existence of an armed conflict); the objectives of committing offences against cultural values (their export as a treasure, the destruction of the cultural heritage; intimidation); the possible effects of the offences against cultural values. Based on these aspects, the author identifies a series of categories of offences against cultural assets. Each of these categories is analysed from the point of view of international liability.
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The present article aims to analyse the antinomy contravention – offence by studying the incrimination of the deed of disturbance of public order and peace. Thus, the legislator, within Article 2 point 1 of the Law No 61/1991 for sanctioning the acts of violation of certain norms of social coexistence, of the public order and peace, incriminates the contravention consisting in committing in public of obscene deeds, acts or gestures, addressing of insults, offensive or vulgar expressions, threats with acts of violence against persons or their property, which may disturb public order and peace or provoke the indignation of citizens or harm the dignity and honour thereof or public institutions. On the other hand, according to Article 371 of the Criminal Code, the act of the person who, in public, by violence committed against persons or property or by serious threats or injuries to the dignity of the persons, disturbs the public order and peace is punished by imprisonment from 3 months to 2 years or with fine. It is easy to find, comparatively analysing, that there is a parallelism of the incriminations, which extract their vigour from spheres of different legal liability, thus the judicial interpreter having the difficult mission to distinguish the conditions in which the two forms of liability are employed, respectively if both can be retained simultaneously, successively or the application of one of them brings about ipso facto the removal of the other.
