Considerații privind determinarea locului săvârșirii infracțiunii

Determining where an offence has been committed is of particular importance from the perspective of both criminal law and criminal procedure law. As a first step, in relation to both branches of law, it must be established whether the offense was committed on Romanian territory. From the perspective of criminal law, this criterion will determine the principle underlying the application of criminal law in space. Where the offense was committed on the territory of Romania, the territoriality principie will apply. Otherwise, Romanian criminal law will be incident only if the conditions of the personality principle, the reality principle or the universality principle are applicable. Regarding criminal procedural law, Articles 41-42 of the Code of Criminal Procedure establish different criteria for determining jurisdiction in relation to the commission of the offense on Romanian territory or outside it. After this issue has been resolved, if the offense is committed on the territory of Romania, from the point of view of criminal procedural law, it is necessary to determine the exact location where the crime took place, as this question is of importance for the determination of territorial jurisdiction. Although, at first sight, the question of determining the place where the crime was committed does not seem to be a particularly difficult issue, we believe that the case law set out in this article proves that judicial practice is often confronted with serious problems in determining jurisdiction. Increasing problems will arise as online criminal activity becomes more and more prevalent. In this paper we have tried to outline some general criteria to facilitate the work of legal practitioners. We have also tried to correct a number of situations that have simply become entrenched in practice: considering the residence/place of establishment of the injured party as the place where the result of the crime occurred in the case of offenses that have caused damage to the injured party.