Criminalizing fraud affecting the European Union's financial interests by diminution of VAT resource

• Main Author: Georgiana Anghel-Tudor
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Published: Bucharest University of Economic Studies 2019-03-01
• Series: Juridical Tribune
• Subjects: harmonization of criminal law; European criminal law; VAT fraud; financial interests of the European Union
• Online Access: http://www.tribunajuridica.eu/arhiva/An9v1/11.%20Georgiana%20Anghel%20Tudor.pdf
• ISSN: 2247-7195; 2248-0382

This article aims to analyze the evolution of the EU Member States' obligation to criminalize fraud affecting the European Union's financial interests by diminution of VAT resources as a result of the competence recognized for the European Union in criminal matters, as well as to determine the extent to which the Romanian criminal law in the field corresponds to the provisions of the 1995 Convention on the protection of the European Communities' financial interests (“PFI Convention”) and those of the 2017 Directive on the fight against fraud to the Union's financial interests by means of criminal law (“PFI Directive”). For this purpose, the author searched the relevant national and ECJ jurisprudence and presented and compared the relevant legal provisions, which were commented and interpreted according to the rules of law (grammatical, historical, logicalsystematic, teleological), taking into account the economic and political context in which they were adopted. The study establishes an obligation to criminalize VAT fraud for EU Member States under the Convention and the Directive, as well as the conformity of the Romanian legislation with the European one in the field, with the consequence that the Romanian legislator should not modify the current regulation in transposing the Directive.