Framework decision 2008/675 - Taking account of convictions in the Member States of the EU in the course of new criminal proceedings - Main contents

EN

Official Journal of the European Union

L 220/32

The European Union has set itself the objective of maintaining and developing an area of freedom, security and justice. This objective requires that it be possible for information on convictions handed down in the Member States to be taken into account outside the convicting Member State, both in order to prevent new offences and in the course of new criminal proceedings.

On 29 November 2000 the Council, in accordance with the conclusions of the Tampere European Council, adopted the programme of measures to implement the principle of mutual recognition of decisions in criminal matters (2), which provides for the ‘adoption of one or more instruments establishing the principle that a court in one Member State must be able to take account of final criminal judgments rendered by the courts in other Member States for the purposes of assessing the offender’s criminal record and establishing whether he has reoffended, and in order to determine the type of sentence applicable and the arrangements for enforcing it’.

The purpose of this Framework Decision is to establish a minimum obligation for Member States to take into account convictions handed down in other Member States. Thus this Framework Decision should not prevent Member States from taking into account, in accordance with their law and when they have information available, for example, final decisions of administrative authorities whose decisions can be appealed against in the criminal courts establishing guilt of a criminal offence or an act punishable under national law by virtue of being an infringement of the rules of law.

Some Member States attach effects to convictions handed down in other Member States, whereas others take account only of convictions handed down by their own courts.

The principle that the Member States should attach to a conviction handed down in other Member States effects equivalent to those attached to a conviction handed down by their own courts in accordance with national law should be affirmed, whether those effects be regarded by national law as matters of fact or of procedural or substantive law. However, this Framework Decision does not seek to harmonise the consequences attached by the different national legislations to the existence of previous convictions, and the obligation to take into account previous convictions handed down in other Member States exists only to the extent that previous national convictions are taken into account under national law.

In contrast to other instruments, this Framework Decision does not aim at the execution in one Member State of judicial decisions taken in other Member States, but rather aims at enabling consequences to be attached to a previous conviction handed down in one Member State in the course of new criminal proceedings in another Member State to the extent that such consequences are attached to previous national convictions under the law of that other Member State.

Therefore this Framework Decision contains no obligation to take into account such previous convictions, for example, in cases where the information obtained under applicable instruments is not sufficient, where a national conviction would not have been possible regarding the act for which the previous conviction had been imposed or where the...