The RE-launching the Center as a leading cultural association to foster education and legal training in European Criminal Law project within the Erasmus+ – Jean Monnet Activities Support to Associations – EACEA – Education, Audiovisual and Culture Executive Agency program was coordinated by the European Criminal Law Center of Catania and saw the full and active collaboration of the University of Catania and the Council of the Catania Bar Association in carrying out the initiatives organized thanks to the support received.

The scientific activities of the project were coordinated by the teacher Giovanni Grasso (President of the Center – Full Teacher of Criminal Law) and by the teacher Rosaria Sicurella (Vice-President of the Center – Full Teacher of Criminal Law), in collaboration with the teacher Anna Maria Maugeri (Full Teacher of Criminal Law), the teacher Grazia Maria Vagliasindi (Associate Teacher of Criminal Law) and the Doctor Valeria Scalia (Secretary of the Center – Criminal Law Researcher), belonging to the Chairs of Criminal Law of the University of Catania. Dr. Floriana Bianco and Dr. Salvo Gulizia were involved in the management of the project. Dr. Annalisa Lucifora, Dr. Vincenzo Tigano, Dr. Amalia Orsina, Dr. Chiara Mignemi, Dr. Dario Sciutteri and Dr. Federico La Vattiata, were also contributed to the scientific-organizational activities of the project as members of the project staff, as collaborators in various capacities (fellowship holders, doctoral students and postdocs) of the Criminal Law Chairs of the University of Catania and members of the European Criminal Law Centre.

The project aimed to make the European Criminal Law Center of Catania a point of reference for raising awareness and disseminating research and contributions of a high scientific level with reference to the impact of European Union law on national criminal law and the progressive affirmation of a criminal law and a criminal policy of the European Union, also through the exchange of different professional experiences.

The project activities took place over a period of approximately three and a half years (September 2015 – May 2019), during which three seminars and a final conference were organized for each year, coinciding with the holding of the General Assembly of the members of the Center for European Criminal Law, dealing respectively for the first year with the criminal protection of the financial interests of the European Union, for the second year with the most serious forms of economic crime, having a transnational dimension, and with the intersections of the latter with organized crime in light of the creation of the European Public Prosecutor’s Office, and for the third year on the multilevel protection of fundamental rights and the effects it has on national criminal law.

The approach that characterized the study meetings was of a transversal nature, as it saw the participation of illustrious speakers from the academic and forensic world, from the judiciary and institutions, with a view to providing different perspectives on the topic covered by the meetings , theoretical and practical-applicative, favoring a pluralistic vision and encouraging debate on controversial issues.

The initiatives organized within the project were included among the continuous training activities of the Council of the Bar Association of Catania and were also accredited for the purposes of the acquisition of CFU by students of the Department of Law of the University of Catania .

With a view to stimulating the participation of young scholars in the debate on the project’s themes and encouraging the dissemination of the Association’s activities at a national and supranational level, at the end of each year the European Criminal Law Center published a call for papers having the same theme as the seminars and the final conference for the corresponding year, receiving a certain number of contributions.

In order to disseminate the results achieved thanks to the carrying out of the initiatives organized within the project, numerous written texts of the reports presented during the seminars and conferences and the papers presented in the call for papers, deemed suitable for publication following review, they have been collected and published in thematic volumes (the third is still being worked on), one for each year of activity, included in the Publications Series of the European Criminal Law Center of Catania – New series.

Thanks to the support received from the EACEA, the Center for European Criminal Law has improved the regularity of its social activities and made its website (www.cdpe.it) more accessible, where all the activities carried out previously listed can be consulted in detail, thus encouraging the dissemination of its initiatives also on a national and supranational.