Summary

Substantive penal law has been little harmonised in the European Union to date. The entry into force of the Treaty of Lisbon put an end to the system of pillars, and subsequent directives, prescribing minimum rules for offences and punishments imposed for particularly serious cross-border crimes depending on their nature, impact or the need to combat them on common grounds are directly applicable. This will create a situation in which we will have our national penal law and that of the European Union—two simultaneously applicable penal laws. It is not clear yet what the direct applicability of penal laws will look like.

The first Republic of Estonia was also characterised by several sources of penal law. This article will discuss the sources of penal law up until 1935, applied only by regular courts. In addition to the penal law applicable by regular courts, there was also military penal law applied by military courts of the Republic of Estonia. Besides legislation applied by regular courts, this article will examine the principles of applying penal law and the resulting problems. This suggests that we have past experience with simultaneous applicability of several penal laws, as well as indicating what kind of challenges can arise from such simultaneous applicability of penal laws.