Key messages expressed by the conference speakers:

• A declining emphasis on formal requirements is observed in the European confiscation regulatory framework.
• The fundamental safeguard ensuring the legitimacy of a confiscation decision lies not in formal prerequisites, but in the court’s conviction that the property was obtained through criminal means.
• Essential conditions for effective confiscation include:
  • systemic coherence between legal definitions and confiscation tools;
  • clarity in regulation and practice;
  • high-quality investigation into the criminal origin (context) of the property;
  • the judiciary’s capacity to make firm decisions based on practical conviction, through logically rigorous and strict evaluation of contextual and factual circumstances.
• The EU rejects civil confiscation proceedings and affirms the preference for criminal confiscation.
• The scope and substance of money laundering offences have already been maximally expanded, effectively enabling their use as a tool in confiscation processes.
• At the EU level, formal requirements (restrictive conditions) for confiscating criminal assets are being almost entirely removed.
• The European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR) has taken a partially shifting and at times ambiguous stance.
• The current threshold of €12,500 for extended confiscation is unjustifiably high and lacks a sound legal rationale.
• Basing the application or non-application of extended confiscation on the principle of proportionality is problematic and incorrect.
• In the United Kingdom, a civil law-based alternative to criminal confiscation has proven effective, enabling the lawful seizure of assets derived from illicit activities.
• Nonetheless, even the most refined civil confiscation tools in the UK are used infrequently, face considerable challenges, and their application is evolving slowly.
• The German breakthrough in the area of criminal asset confiscation deserves attention not only for its strong practical outcomes but also as a model implementation of Directive 2024/1260.
• Noteworthy European developments include: the Lithuanian model (confiscation through the mechanism of ownerless property), the German model (standalone extended confiscation), the Latvian model (preliminary civil confiscation). Continued research and discussion are necessary to assess whether these represent a long-awaited solution or are simply “too good to be true”.

Following the presentations, an expert discussion took place featuring contributions from Vilnius University (VU) doctoral candidate and attorney Laura Martinaitytė, VU Professor and Justice of the Constitutional Court Aurelijus Gutauskas, Mykolas Romeris University Professor and Justice of the Supreme Court of Lithuania Olegas Fedosiuk, Associate Professor at Vytautas Magnus University and Prosecutor at the Kaunas Regional Prosecutor’s Office Marijus Šalčius, as well as other conference participants.

The discussion focused on which procedural model - criminal or civil - holds greater potential for future application. Participants also debated the appropriate definition of confiscable property: whether it should be limited to assets of criminal origin or more broadly defined as property of unexplained origin. Further deliberation addressed the role of judicial conviction regarding the origin of the property, as well as the relevance of formal conditions and the presumptions based upon them in the confiscation of criminal assets. The participants emphasized the importance of clarity regarding both the objective and the subject matter of confiscation for all parties involved in the process.

The outcomes of the project have been made publicly available:

• Bikelis, S., Pranka, D., Dainauskaitė, G. (2025). Penal vs. Confiscation-Only Approaches in Money Laundering Control. Baltic Journal of Law & Politics, 17(2), 188–206. https://doi.org/10.2478/bjlp-2024-00021.
• Bikelis, S. (2025). Confiscation Beyond the All-Crime Approach and the Proportionality Principle – A Case of the Lithuanian Illicit Enrichment Offence Concept. Laws, 14(1), 1. https://doi.org/10.3390/laws14010001.
• S. Bikelis. The Fight Against Unjust Enrichment - Where are the Limits of the Principle of Proportionality? (article written in Lithuanian). 2 January 2025, „Teisė.Pro“ and „Infolex.lt“.

The project is funded by the Research Council of Lithuania (LMTLT), Agreement No. S-MIP-23-40.

Photo credit: Ministry of Justice of the Republic of Lithuania.