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RAIMO LAHTI
of the ECtHR and, after Finland" membership in the European Union (EU) since
1995, in line with the judgments of the Court of Justice of the EU (CJEU).
For instance, explicit provisions have been included in the revised Code of
Judicial Procedure (chapter 17, sections 18 and 25; 732/2015) on the privilege against
self-incrimination and on the exclusion of unlawfully obtained evidence. A separate
legal Act (781/2013) on the prohibition of double jeopardy (i.e. a prohibition against
the cumulative use of criminal punishment and administrative penal fee) was
introduced for tax fraud cases. Accordingly, as a rule, no charges may be brought
nor court judgments passed if the same person in the same case has already incurred
a punitive tax or customs increase (PC 29:11).
CHALLENGES ARISING FROM THE EUROPEANIZED CRIMINAL LAW
AND JUDICIAL PROCEDURE”
Karoly Bard saw already in his Inkeri Anttila honor lecture in 1996 certain
possibilities for the birth of a European criminal law. According to him,
there were two opposite direction discernible: on the one hand, there was
a tendency towards the extension of the threat posed by criminal law (for
example, through the broadening of the scope of the European instruments);
on the other hand, the organs of the ECHR would continue to fix the minimum
standards of a fair administration of justice.”
The administration of criminal justice, which so far has been an essential
element of state sovereignty, has partially moved and is still moving, beyond the
direct control of nation States. The ECHR and its case law have an important
role in creating the European model of criminal procedure, as also Karoly Bard
foresaw. One of the challenging questions to comparative criminal scientists
is: to what extent can we speak about common legal positions in respect of
the general part of criminal law, the common legal principles and concepts?
The general principles and concepts of criminal law have been developed since
the nineteenth century primarily by the doctrines and practices of national
criminal law and national criminal justice systems. Such concepts and principles
have been mainly developed within two legal cultures, under either civil law
or the common law tradition, and have therefore largely differentiated. It is
25 See, in more detail, e.g. Raimo Lahti, Multilayered criminal policy: The Finnish experience
regarding the development of Europeanized criminal justice, New Journal of European
Criminal Law 11 (2020), 7-19.
6 Bard, Karoly, European Criminal Law, in Raimo Lahti (ed.), Kohti rationaalista ja humaania
kriminaalipolitiikkaa, Helsinki, Helsingin yliopisto, 1996, 241-253.
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