European Integration Studies

On the Systematisation of Criminal Responsibility by and in Enterprises – Introduction and Overview

2025-10-28T09:06:00+01:00

Compliance as a strategy to avoid criminal, administrative and civil sanctions

2025-10-28T09:13:34+01:00

Compliance, which has found its place in the corporate practices of European companies, has changed from the backward-looking, traditionally reactive criminal and administrative offence law to a forward-looking control system with a focus on modern prevention, which refers to the enforcement of legal prohibitions and regulations and the company's internal guidelines, including organizational measures within the company. This is supplemented by the pursuit of the goal of compliance integrity, the creation of a compliance culture within the company and the introduction of formal structures with preventative effects. This article shows the growing legalization and juridification of ethical and internal company rules and the growing importance of sanction-related compliance. One of the main reasons for this development is the increasing plurality of prosecutions in sanctions law - the plurality of sanctions, of sanctioned subjects and of prosecution and sanctioning bodies as well as the parallel administrative and criminal investigations in several states. At present, there is no guarantee that the various sanctions will be applied in a proportionate manner and that appropriate sanctions will be imposed. As a result, the sanctions imposed on companies can lead to overwhelmingly high penalties, which should therefore be avoided at all costs.

Compliance in competition law

2025-10-28T11:12:09+01:00

This study aims to examine the operation of competition law compliance from two perspectives. First, it examines how competition regulation's compliance mechanism works from the perspective of promoting compliance. Subsequently, it highlights the difficulties associated with corporate competition compliance. Furthermore, it describes how to avoid automatic fine reduction while recognizing compliance efforts.

Necessity of considering compliance measures before and after the act in Germany and Hungary

2025-10-28T11:19:18+01:00

This article provides a conceptual and legal overview of the term compliance, with a particular focus on its distinctions between soft compliance and hard compliance. In addition, compliance measures taken both before and after a criminal offence has been committed are examined, highlighting their preventive and remedial functions within corporate and legal frameworks. Particular attention is given to the legal situation in Germany and Hungary, offering a comparative analysis of the regulation and enforcement of compliance in these two jurisdictions.

Criminal sanctions against legal persons and their limitations due to the ne bis in idem principle

2025-10-28T11:24:31+01:00

This study examines the system of criminal sanctions applicable to legal persons. The introduction and first part of the paper briefly outlines some general questions and the systematization of sanctions. The sections that follow respectively introduce and discuss various types of corporate criminal sanctions. Thereafter, the principles of sanctioning are examined. The final section is devoted to examining the limitations of sanctions due to the ne bis in idem principle.

Consequences of leniency programmes and whistleblowing measures for the sanctioning process in criminal proceedings

2025-10-28T11:31:06+01:00

Whistleblowing and leniency programmes are important instruments to detect and successfully solve crimes. Whereas whistleblowers are natural persons who report or disclose legal violations in which they are not necessarily involved, principal witnesses are involved in criminal activities and report their knowledge to the authorities. Legal systems must provide incentives for people to report their knowledge and make it available to the authorities. Whistleblowers must therefore be guaranteed adequate protection, and principal witnesses must benefit from disclosing their knowledge by having their penalties reduced or waived entirely.

Sentencing guidelines based on the US model for criminal and administrative penalties against associations in the European Union

2025-10-28T11:37:44+01:00

Associations responsible for criminal violations are sanctioned with various sanctions in the member states of the European Union – criminal penalties or fines. These sanctions vary in severity and are enforced in different ways, as a look at Austria and Germany shows. To achieve fair and consistent sanctioning in this area, the literature repeatedly calls for to establish sentencing guidelines for corporations based on the model of the US sentencing guidelines to reduce sentencing discrepancies and promote transparency and proportionality in sentencing. This article argues that legal systems based on a statute law system are rightly should adhere to their own legal institutions and cultures. This allows for integration of the association sanctions into the respective national criminal justice systems without causing internal systemic distortions, which can lead to a lack of acceptance by the law enforcement authorities and the associations concerned.

Health Care Ethics Committees (HECs) – a useful instrument for legal compliance?

2025-10-28T13:27:33+01:00

Until now, health care respective hospital ethics committees (HECs) have hardly been considered as an instrument of compliance. This article presents an initial review of this established structure from the point of view of legal compliance. To this end, the emergence, dissemination, and functioning of HECs in the USA and Germany are presented and questions of quality are addressed. The extent to which the structure of ethics committees in health care facilities can be viewed and utilized as a compliance tool is examined in relation to compliance as a means of ensuring legal conformity, preventing legal violations, and as a compliance culture. It is shown that HECs are suitable as a compliance tool if they function well, but that some improvements are still needed, especially with regard to the ethical and legal expertise of the counselors and the financial resources of the structure.

Compliance as a mean for the protection of the financial interests of the European Union

2025-10-28T13:38:31+01:00

The protection of the EU budget and its financial interests is an important task of the Member States as well as the institutions, bodies and agencies of the Union. This objective can be reached by several means: by preventing criminal offences affecting the financial interests of the Union, by monitoring the regular implementation of the EU budget, by strengthening operational cooperation between national and EU authorities and by sanctioning of these criminal offences and illegal activities. However, in order to ensure an effective protection of the financial interests, the European Union has to primarily focus on the preventive measures, since it is always better to detect and prevent the commission of crimes than to react to committed illegal acts. In this context, compliance measures, e.g. risk assessment and risk management, internal investigation or whistleblowing, play an important role. This paper focuses on the protection of whistleblowing. In 2019, the European Parliament and the Council adopted a Directive on the protection of whistleblowers, which lays down common minimum standards that provide a high level of protection for persons reporting breaches of Union law. The scope of the Whistleblowing Directive also covers breaches affecting the financial interests of the Union, since it can be a useful tool for the early detection and prevention of such criminal offences.

Workplace compliance and whistle-blowing in Hungary

2025-10-28T13:43:13+01:00

Employers have several obligations that do not stem from labour law alone. This study presents the phenomenon of workplace compliance with several associated issues. This study examines diversity management, one of the most colourful challenges of companies, and discusses the workplace whistle-blowing system, with its domestic rules and possible future amendments.

The new anti-money laundering and countering the financing of terrorism (AML/CFT) legislative package of the European Union

2025-10-28T13:52:58+01:00

The final elements of the new anti-money laundering and countering the financing of terrorism legislative package of the EU were published in the Official Journal on 19 June 2024. The highly ambitious legislative package delivers a stronger and consistent set of anti-money laundering and countering the financing of terrorism rules at EU level. The implementation of the legislative package can be achieved by comprehensively amending the Hungarian AML/CFT Act (or the adoption of a new AML/CFT Act) and the provisions of the current AML/CFT Act must be reviewed and modified on the basis of the new requirements.

This study analyzes some of the most important differences between the requirements of the EU AML/CFT Directive currently in force and the EU Single Rulebook (the new EU AML/CFT Regulation and Directive), referring also to the necessary amendment of the AML/CFT Act in these fields. The study especially focuses on key requirements of obliged entities, especially regarding the scope and the elements of the customer due diligence.

Conclusions

2025-10-28T13:56:23+01:00