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NUMBERS AND STATISTICS
CONCERNING SOL
To understand how SOL rules work in different
countries, we can gather statistical data on statu-
te-barred proceedings. A tentative comparison
for this study provides only partial results, since
we found that several countries could not pro-
vide consistent aggregated results or only had
responses from secondary sources.
In Italy, the Ministry of Justice refused to provide
specific data on the number of statute-barred
criminal proceedings: it should be specified that
the Ministry did not claim that such data were
not available; rather, that it would not release
them for the purposes of this publication.
Similarly, these sets of data are either not col-
lected or not available in Spain and Greece, which
makes it difficult to understand the scale of the
issue from a nationwide perspective.
In Bulgaria, data show that 37.180 criminal
proceedings became statute barred in 2015, a
28.5% percentage of statute-barred proceedings
compared to the overall number. The trend has
been decreasing over the last few years, both in
numbers and in percentage terms. Although this
number may seem astonishing, it should be read
carefully as it was not provided by the Ministry
of Justice; rather, it was drawn from the Annual
Reports of the Prosecution Office for 2015 and
2013, this meaning that a significant number of
the proceedings listed therein as statute-barred
are those against unknown unidentified perpe-
trators, which would not be listed as criminal
proceedings in other countries.
Romania provides more specific data which can
be useful to understand how local law operates
at a numeric level, even if there is some uncer-
tainty over the data collection method. Data
show 74.449 statute-barred cases in 2015 and
115.466 in 2014, though only 1.050 in 2013 and
444 in 2012; percentages vary significantly also
between 2013 and 2014, with statute-barredpro-
ceedings amounting to 11.55% in 2015, 17.12%
in 2014 and only 0.16% in 2013
15
. Data are also
available in relation to the percentage of statu-
te-barred corruption-related crimes compared
to proceedings completed for the same crimes:
such data are very interesting because, although
corruption crimes are difficult to investigate and
are usually detected late, it seems that only few
of them become statute barred: depending on
the crime concerned, the percentage ranges
between 0.3 and 3% of the total number of pro-
ceedings completed.
In Portugal, data are available only in relation to
criminal proceedings within the jurisdiction of
the District Public Prosecutor’s Office in Lisbon.
Such data refer to proceedings becoming statu-
te-barred before the court-judgement phase only.
The data provided by the Ministry of Justice show
significantly lower numbers than the District
Public Prosecutor’s Office in Lisbon (a territorial
jurisdiction) and were ultimately discarded for
not adequately reflecting the number of criminal
proceedings at a national level. Aggregated data
on criminal proceedings show that approxima-
tely 0.06% of crimes became statute-barred in
the last five years.
The data provided by the Directorate General for
Justice Policy refer to crimes statute barred at a
court level, not considering those dismissed in
the course of the investigations
16
. Such data co-
ver the 2011-2013 period and specifically focus
on the number of defendants. Statute-barred ca-
ses amounted to 2% of the total figure in 2013. In
case of active bribery, defendants were 35 with
3% of statute-barred crimes; these percentage
were even lower for other corruption-related cri-
mes and, in several cases, no proceedings were
statute-barred. These numbers are consistent
with the national framework which lays down
very long SOL and specific regulations for cor-
ruption-related crimes.
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