La prescrizione nel sistema penale portoghese e le garanzie dello Stato di Diritto

Abstract

The statute of limitations has been challenged in the last decades by the existence of complex criminal cases that motivate longer investigations, by the anticipation of criminal intervention (transformation of crimes of result into crimes of danger), by more complex law techniques and by the fragmentation of the relevant facts. In three crimes this difficulty is felt in particular: abuse of fiscal trust, corruption and fraud to get subsidies. The public health emergency legislation that was created in March 2020 was another step in this complexity, having divided doctrine and jurisprudence on the compatibility of such solutions with the constitutional criminal guarantees. A problem to which a recent decision by the Portuguese Constitutional Court gave an answer, similar to that offered by the Italian Constitutional Court.