Criminalizing fraud affecting the European Union's financial interests
by diminution of VAT resources
PhD. student Georgiana ANGHEL-TUDOR1
Abstract
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 co mpared the relevant legal provisions, which were
commented and interpreted according to the rules of law (grammatical, historical, logical-
systematic, teleolog ical), taking in to 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.
Keywords: harmonization of criminal law; European crimina l law; VAT fraud;
financial interests of the European Union.
JEL Classification: K14, K34
1. Introduction
Criminalizing fraud which has as an effect the diminution of VAT
resources - expressly provided f or i n Directive (EU) 2017/1371 of the European
Parliament and of the Council of 5 July 2017 on the fight against fraud to the
Union's financial interests by means of criminal law2 (“PFI Directive”) - has long
been considered to fall within the exclusive competence of the Member States and
outside the scope of the 1995 Convention on the protection of t he European
Communities' f inancial i nterests (“PFI Convention”). However, starting from the
relatively recent jurisprudence of the Court of Justice of the European Union
(ECJ), it is important to establish the existence of an obligation to criminalize VAT
fraud even under the PFI Convention, as well as the compliance of Romanian
1 Georgiana Anghel-Tudor - Faculty of Law, University of Bucharest, Judge at the Bucharest Court of
Appeal, Romania, tudor.georgiana@ drept.unibuc.ro.
2 OJ L 198, 28.7.2017.