The competences of the European Pubic Prosecutor must be related to the
criminal offences provided for in the existing Criminal Code, which include fraud committed against the Union’s financial ...interests, through a special law. The text above shows what these criminal offences are. Whether or not these criminal offences should also be listed in the Act on the European
Public Prosecutor remains to be discussed.
Economic criminal offences regulated by the Croatian Criminal Code require thorough reconstruction. Descriptions of some economic criminal offences in the Criminal Code are entirely outdated and do ...not correspond to the present time. The need to modernise this part of criminal law is connected to the Croatia's forthcoming accession to the EU, which calls for the harmonisation of national criminal law systems, especially in the field of economic criminal law, by ensuring the protection of market competition from prohibited agreements (cartels), and by punishing: fraud committed to the detriment of the EU budget, offering bribes in economic operations, insider trading, market manipulation, etc. Something has already been done in this field (for example, the inclusion of the provisions on fraud to the detriment of the EU in the CC; the adoption of a special law regulating criminal offences committed against capital markets), but this is still not enough. The Working Group of the Ministry of Justice which has been preparing the Draft New Criminal Code has discussed on several occasions how to regulate economic criminal offences. A consensus has been reached that these offences should no longer be scattered in two chapters, as is the case in the present Criminal Code (Criminal Offences against the Safety of Payment Transactions and Criminal Offences against Official Duty), but they should be brought together in one separate chapter entitled Criminal Offences against the Economy. The paper presents the most important changes which have been proposed, and which relate primarily to the criminal offence of abuse of trust in business operations and subvention fraud, and customs and tax evasion. The paper also outlines changes to bankruptcy criminal offences, criminal offences against market competition, money laundering and concealment. The regulation of criminal offences against capital markets in the Criminal Code is also presented. PUBLICATION ABSTRACT
