CYBER VAT FRAUDS, NE BIS IN IDEM AND JUDICIAL COOPERATION A comparative study between, Italy, Belgium, Spain and Germany

The two topics addressed by the present research are undoubtedly of crucial importance in the context of the European Union policies. On the one hand the protection of the financial interests of the European Union is historically the basis of the process of building a “European criminal law” 1: it is in fact the first protection need (the first “legal good”) for which it was felt at the level of the European institutions the need to stimulate and harmonize the criminal sanctioning resources of the Member States. On the other hand, cybercrime is a phenomenon in constant increase that poses serious problems for the traditional criminal law systems, statically often unprepared in front of forms of crimes committed through electronic means and in need of specific interventions not always easy for those completely new crimes that can be committed exclusively via informatic means. Furthermore, the use of Information Technology clearly overcomes the “physical” limitations imposed by the national borders, thus requiring a coordinated and organized supranational response that only an entity such as the Union is able to provide at a continental level.