The universality principle of applicability of criminal legislation

The comparative analyses

Abstract

Universal principle of the territorial validity of the criminal law is commonly accepted in the legislation of the European countries. There are certain differences regarding the conditions and reaches of the application of this principle. While there are some countries that don't have any additional conditions for application of domestic law with regards to certain criminal offences and cases in which a foreign citizen commits a crime abroad to the detriment of citizens of another country or a foreign country itself, more or less all the European countries allow, under certain conditions, application of domestic law in this case as well. There are differences regarding the limitation of validity of the universal principle, but in most cases legislation of other countries have the two limitations which are also present in the Criminal Code of the Republic of Serbia. These are the condition that the foreign citizen was in the state at the time (forum deprehensionis) and the principle of subsidiarity, i.e. that the domestic law will be applied only if legislation of another country wasn't applied already. The Criminal Code of the Republic of Serbia takes a standard and common solution in this matter. The Law on Organisation and Jurisdiction of Government Authorities in Prosecuting Perpetrators of War Crimes does not mean derogation of the regulations of the Criminal Code of the Republic of Serbia, i.e. it is not able to regulate an issue that concerns substantive law. It is a legislation which regulates certain organisational matters and, partially, procedural law matters, as the name suggests.