PENAL POLICY OF THE COUNTRIES OF SOUTH­EAST EUROPE AND HARMONIZATION WITH THE EUROPEAN UNION

АНТОНОВИЋ Ратомир (Факултет за право, безбедност и менаџмент „Константин Велики” Ниш), antonovicr@gmail.com
ПЕТКОВИЋ Андрија (Универзитет „Унион Никола Тесла” Београд; Педагошки клуб, Тиват), pedagoskiklub@gmail.com

The paper provides a comparative legal review of the penal policy in the countries of Southeast Europe, with the aim of analyzing criminal law norms, their synchronization and compliance with legal standards and penological practice present in the European Union (EU). All of the mentioned legal systems are characterized by the abolition of the death penalty, which is one of the standards of EU criminal law. Consequently, this means that all these countries have adopted a policy of humanizing punishment, which aims at resocialization and prevention. The differences between the compared penal systems are found in the length of the heaviest prison sentence, as well as the application of mitigating and aggravating measures in case of mitigating or aggravating circumstances. The paper also examines the effect of conditional sentence, which represents a special privilege for those convicts who have committed a criminal offense for the first time. Finally, the analysis indicates that all considered penal systems are based on the legal foundations on which the modern legal systems in the EU member states are also based. In this sense, these penal systems follow the legal trends in the penal policy of the EU member states and try to anticipate to a great extent the legal penological standards of the EU through the strengthening of international judicial cooperation and through the harmonization of domestic legislation with EU law.

Keywords: Criminal policy, comparative law, Southeast Europe, EU law