Empty regulatory referrals and ineffectiveness of smuggling offences

Abstract

Smuggling offenses are regulated in Organic Law 12/1995, of December 12, 1995, outside the Criminal Code. This regulatory provision in a special law supports their configuration as residual crimes, which, however, does not correspond to their real importance, since the different types of smuggling, despite the little interest they arouse in the doctrine and jurisprudence, occupy a prominent place among economic crime and in European regulations, integrating under such denomination different types of crime, each with its own typical profiles. The purpose of this work is to point out the essential characteristics of smuggling offenses and the problems of legality that may arise in their application, due to the use of the normative technique of blank criminal laws, not adapted to the modifications of the texts to which they refer, also offering proposals for improvement to increase the operability of this special law.