El futuro órgano instructor común: una propuesta para la organización de la fiscalía europea y para el control de su actividad

La política penal para la protección de los intereses financieros comunitarios, iniciada por la Comunidad Económica Europea, actual Unión Europea, y la producción normativa en dicho ámbito, ha permitido que algunos sectores hablen de la existencia de un Derecho penal económico europeo. Por otro lado, se desprende de la redacción de los artículos 86 y 325 del Tratado de Funcionamiento de la Unión Europea que el legislador tiene la intención de crear, al menos, una fase procesal supranacional para la investigación de los delitos que afecte a los intereses financieros de la Unión, que formará parte de un proceso penal en el que también intervendrán los órganos judiciales competentes de los Estados miembros con objeto de combatir estas actividades ilícitas. De este modo, el artículo 86 prevé la posibilidad de crear una Fiscalía Europea que ocupará un lugar central en este nuevo proceso penal. Entre las competencias de la Fiscalía se incluye la investigación de los delitos de fraude y demás actividades ilícitas que afecten, directa o indirectamente, a los intereses financieros de la Unión, descubrir a los autores y cómplices de estas actividades ilegales y solicitar la apertura del juicio oral ante los órganos jurisdiccionales nacionales. A partir de estas líneas iniciales esbozadas en el Tratado de Funcionamiento, será necesario establecer las normas aplicables a la Fiscalía Europea y al desempeño de sus funciones y especificar su organización interna.Criminal policy for the protection of the financial interests, initiated by the European Economic Community, now the European Union, and the production of rules in this area, has allowed some sectors speak about the existence of a European Economic Criminal Law. Furthermore, it follows from the contents of articles 86 and 325 of the Treaty on the Functioning of the European Union that the legislator intends to create, at least, a supranational procedural stage for investigating offences against the Union 's financial interest, that will be part of a criminal process in which will also be involved the competent courts of the Member States in order to combat these ilegal activities. In this way, the article 86 provide for the possibility of creating a European Public Prosecutor 's Office (EPPO) that will occupy a central place in this new criminal proceeding. The EPPO powers include the investigation of frauds and any other illegal activities affecting, directly or indirectly, the financial interests of the Union, prosecuting and bringing to judgrnent in the competent courts ofthe Member States the perpetrators of, and accomplices in, of these offences. From these inicial fines, outlined in the Treaty on the Functioning, will be necessary to set the rules applicable to the European Public Prosecutor 's Office and to the performance of its functions and to specifi its internal organization

The European Public Prosecutor’s Office: Protecting the Union’s Financial Interests through Criminal Law

The protection of the financial interests of the European Union and the defence of the European financial system are two aspirations that have accompanied the European Union since its foundation. They are part of the nature of the Union, which was born to overcome the economic crisis installed in Europe after the Second World War. Today, such objectives have been recognized in the Treaty on the European Union (TEU) and the Treaty on the Functioning of the European Union (TFEU). The undeniable economic imprint of the Union is shown in the different areas in which its legislative activity is carried out. The ambitious financial policy only makes sense on a solid economic and financial context, which requires the protection of the budget and the prevention and sanction of conducts undermining the economic pillars. The European Public Prosecutor´s Office (EPPO) marks the turning point in criminal policy that seeks to strengthen the fight against fraud. In this legal context, it is interesting to highlight two aspects. First, the European legislator understands that criminal law is the most effective instrument to combat fraudulent activities affecting the financial interests of the Union; as a consequence, criminal law becomes a prima ratio barrier against crime. Second, the EPPO will be the only body to investigate and prosecute such crimes. The objective of this article is to analyse these aspects and reflect on the limits on the material competence attributed to the EPPO

Assessment of the use of preliminary concepts test and rubrics in practical learning at university

Comunicació presentada al ICERI 2019 12th annual International Conference of Education, Research and Innovation (Seville, Spain. 11-13 November, 2019).The high number of students and teachers in the laboratory practices of the course Theory of Machines and Mechanisms, shared by several engineering degrees at Universitat Jaume I, makes the teaching planning and evaluation challenging. Some issues were observed in past years, such as differences in the student knowledge of basic concepts, underpreparation before practical classes, poor quality of the written reports, absence of common objective assessment criteria among teachers and low success rate. That led us to the implementation of an action for educational improvement during the academic year 2018-2019. The aim was to improve the students' level of training before attending laboratory practices, to standardize the evaluation among teachers and to involve students in the process of assessment in order to improve learning outcomes and the quality of the reports delivered. The improvement action included, on one side, carrying out an initial evaluation with a diagnostic test. The results of this test were used to estimate the basic knowledge of the students and proposing specific tutorial sessions in order to unify their level of knowledge. This method should increase the students involvement and improve the success while performing the laboratory practices. On the other side, rubrics were created in order to standardize the correction criteria. These rubrics were also made public to the students, before the classes, in an attempt to improve the quality of their reports. In addition, for some of the reports the students were asked to self-assess their own reports following the public rubric. The results indicate that teachers found the rubrics useful for objective and fair evaluation. However, the standard deviation across teachers has not been apparently reduced with respect to the previous year by the use of them, although the differences in the student cohort have to be taken into account. The effect on grades of the factors teacher and session, as well as their interaction, was significant (p<.05) according to the ANOVA tests, as already was prior to the application of the action. It was also found that the student grades in the practical classes did not improved significantly. A low implication in the preparation before classes and a low tutorial attendance were observed in the collective of students, possible explaining in part the discrete improvements obtained. The self-assessment improved the grades on average where it was applied. We concluded that the involvement of both students and teachers is necessary to promote learning quality using these techniques

A logistic regression approach to estimating customer profit loss due to lapses in insurance

This article focuses on business risk management in the insurance industry. A methodology for estimating the profit loss caused by each customer in the portfolio due to policy cancellation is proposed. Using data from a European insurance company, customer behaviour over time is analyzed in order to estimate the probability of policy cancelation and the resulting potential profit loss due to cancellation. Customers may have up to two different lines of business contracts: motor insurance and other diverse insurance (such as, home contents, life or accident insurance). Implications for understanding customer cancellation behaviour as the core of business risk management are outlined.Policy cancellation, customer loyalty, profit loss, customer behavior.