On 17 April 2026, the 6th international scientific–practical conference “Trends and Challenges in European and National Criminal Policy” was held at the Ministry of Justice. For the second consecutive year, it was organized by criminal justice scholars from four Lithuanian legal research institutions: the Law Institute of the Lithuanian Centre for Social Sciences (LCSS), Mykolas Romeris University (MRU), the Faculty of Law of Vytautas Magnus University (hereinafter – VMU), and the Faculty of Law of Vilnius University (hereinafter – VU). This year, the main organizer of the conference was the LCSS Law Institute. The conference was opened and participants were welcomed by Vice-Minister of Justice Martynas Dobrovolskis and Director of the LCSS Law Institute, Dr Dovilė Pūraitė-Andrikienė.
The conference consisted of three sessions. In the first session, held in English, scholars O. Calavita from the University of Turin (Italy), C. Konopatsch from FenUni (Switzerland), and M. Kilchling from the Max Planck Institute for the Study of Crime, Security and Law (Germany), together with S. Bikelis from the LCSS Law Institute, analysed the legal regulation of confiscation of criminal assets in Italy, Austria, Germany, and Lithuania, respectively, and its compliance with the new Confiscation Directive No. 2024/1260. S. Bikelis presented a dilemma currently faced in Lithuania: whether to implement the Directive through an improved civil asset confiscation law or to supplement the regulation within criminal legislation. The first option entails certain risks related to international cooperation. It also illustrates the fluidity of confiscation instruments between civil and criminal law. The working group addressing this issue has opted for the first approach.
The second session focused mainly on issues of criminal procedure, including the immunity of politicians from criminal liability, judicial impartiality, and a range of procedural issues where practice may interpret procedural law too flexibly. It also addressed the problem of appealing against clearly misapplied legal provisions after a fine has been paid and, finally, discussed issues related to the enforcement of penalties, more specifically, conditional release from places of imprisonment.
The third session, devoted to substantive criminal law issues, featured two presentations by doctoral student Liutauras Lukošius of the Law Institute: “Fragmentation of Criminal Liability for Tax Evasion: Is a Consolidated Solution Possible?” and, together with colleagues from MRU and VDU, “Issues of Compensation for Damage Due to Temporary Restrictions of Property Rights in Criminal Proceedings.”
In addition to these topics, the session also covered issues such as the dilemmas of criminalising unlawful collection of personal data, the indeterminacy of the offence of abuse of office, and the reform of the regulation of sexual offences, including the introduction of liability for sexual relations without consent. The latter topic sparked some of the most intense discussions during the closing part of the conference.