Browsing by Subject "harmonization"
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(2021)Tiivistelmä – Referat – Abstract Gambling is a staple in cultures around the world. As society and technology evolved, so did gambling – going from brick-and-mortar venues to mobile applications. However, gambling is a service that is currently not subject to harmonization within Member States of the European Union. This makes for a very different set of rules on how to regulate gambling, especially its online gambling category and the steps gambling operators have to take to ensure that its services are, and remain, a safe environment and also protect children and other vulnerable persons. This work will analyze online gambling, but only through the lenses of its marketing effects on children and how different Member States (or former Member State in the case of the United Kingdom) approach the matter. The aim is to find out if there is currently a system capable of successfully achieving the protection of children on its marketing regulations. Besides issues concerning consumer law, gambling also has a direct effect on the protection of children – a core value of the European Union. In Chapter 1, the goal and reasons for this study will be introduced, as well as the methodology chosen to conduct this research. Chapter 2 will look back to the origins of Gambling, how it became a legitimate business and set out the current gambling scenario in the European Union. Chapter 3 will analyze the types of marketing used by online gambling websites and how children interact with advertisement in general and how they are firstly introduced to gambling. Following on Chapter 4, the duality between children’s right and gambling will be examined. In Chapter 5, a comparison between the current regulations set out by Malta, Sweden, and the United Kingdom will be made, and Chapter 6 will bring examples of decisions by advertisement agencies that upheld citizen’s complaints for being aimed at children. Chapter 7 evaluates new features in videogames that could be equal to gambling and how the European Union is dealing with it. Followed by a quick look into the additional protection for gamblers due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Finally, taking everything into account we recommend that at least in the respect of protection of children (especially via marketing) gambling should be harmonized in the Internal Market, and proposes a hybrid model taking the best parts of the regulations examined in this study. However, further research is recommended.
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(2024)Organized crime is a concept that elicits powerful conceptions of particularly serious, methodical and large-scale criminality. Such conceptions of organized crime have directed societal discourse on the matter and influenced public decision makers, yet the particular gravity associated with organized crime is not reflected in the legal definitions that have been adopted at the European level, and as an extension stemming from harmonization, in national orders of criminal law. The definition of a ‘criminal organization’ adopted by the Union in the Framework Decision 2008/841/JHA remains exceedingly vague and overinclusive and does little to reflect the aspects that are traditionally associated with organized crime. This discrepancy is problematic, for the aforementioned conceptions of organized crime have been used to justify increased repression for those that have been deemed to fall under the broad ambit of organized crime as defined in the framework decision. The purpose of this thesis is to analyze the history and background of the European Union’s organized crime related instruments and to subject them to the scrutiny of normative criminalization theory to ascertain whether the EU’s measures in the field are acceptable under a normative conception of legitimate criminal law. As such, aspects of legal theory and philosophy are heavily present in the methodology of this thesis. To determine the normative legitimacy of criminal law measures in the field of organized crime, this thesis relies on a traditional, restrictive conception of criminal law which is juxtaposed with the expansive, prevention-oriented approach to criminal law which the EU’s measures in the field of organized crime embody. To achieve this objective, the EU’s organized crime related harmonization measures are subjected to scrutiny imposed by certain relevant restrictive criminalization principles. As it becomes evident that the Union’s measures largely fail to live up to the standards that are required of legitimate criminalization, a natural follow up question becomes relevant: can or should we maintain the current harmonization efforts in the field of organized crime? To answer this question, the latter portion of this focuses on conceptualizing potential alternative normative justifications for harmonization in the field of EU criminal law and on how harmonizing organized crime-related legislation in a legitimate manner could serve a worthwhile function considering these alternative justifications.
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