Abordări diferite ale principiului nullum crimen, nulla poena sine lege în dreptul penal european. Există un principiu al legalităţii în dreptul penal european?
Different approaches to the nullum crimen, nulla poena sine lege principle in European Criminal Law. Is there a principle of legality recognized in European Criminal Law?

Summary/Abstract: All systems work based on a pattern that represents the skeleton of the framework in which provisions are edicted by the state. In constitutional democracies, this fact could not be possible without having a real legal basis grounded on principles that allows the legislative to elaborate laws and the judges to apply them. The principle of legality is seen as a cornerstone of criminal law. Its importance can be found in its many corollaries which are linked with the idea of legality: criminal liability should have its basis on a norm (lex scripta), the prohibition of retroactive application of criminal provisions (lex praevia), the obligation to define criminal offences clearly and precisely (lex certa), the obligation to strictly interpret criminal law and the prohibition against analogous reasoning (lex stricta). Also, this principle has acquired a human rights status, since it is listed in many human rights treaties. The present study starts by introducing the reader to the short evolution of documents in which the principle is pointed out as being an integrative part of European Criminal Law. The author tries to present the vision of the European Court of Human Rights by emphasizing that almost any restriction of a right laid down in the Convention must satisfy the condition of legality in order to be licit. Furthermore, the author describes the evolution of the principle in the European legal landscape by highlighting a few important cases of the ECJ, ending with the most recent decision of the European Court of Justice – Taricco II, which offers a new perspective of how the principle of legality must be balanced in both, the European and national legislations. The article is concluded by presenting a few theories elaborated by legal scholars that aim to unify the application of the principle at a European level and some short personal considerations regarding the principle of legality in the EU.

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