Germany

This chapter analyses the German bottom-up legal framework that connects to OLAF’s EU top-down legal framework I analysed in Chap. 2 . This chapter, together with the previous Dutch chapter, constitutes Part III of this book: ‘Bottom-Up: The National Legal Frameworks’. This bottom-up analysis focuses on providing the answers to the analytical sub-research questions raised in Chap. 1 . A study of composite enforcement procedures cannot only study EU law. Such a study also demands an examination of national law. The purpose of this chapter is to offer the reader the second, bottom ‘half’ of the answers to the analytical sub-research questions. Together with the previous Chap. 3 , this Germany-specific chapter demonstrates how national law connects to OLAF’s legal framework. The findings of this chapter, together with those of Chaps. 2 and 3 , constitute the pieces necessary to see whether the fundamental rights of the person concerned are protected in composite enforcement procedures (the evaluative goal) and, eventually, to see whether the OLAF and national legal frameworks need to be changed and, if so, how this change is to be pursued (the normative goal). The normative and evaluative goals and accompanying sub-research questions are the subject of the subsequent Chaps. 5 and 6 , respectively. Section 4.2 looks at OLAF’s institutional partner in Germany, in particular its role and its functioning, and how it fits into OLAF’s Union law institutional design and architecture and the mould it lays for OLAF’s national partners. Section 4.3 analyses the way in which OLAF gathers evidence in the Germany in its investigations. Section 4.4 discusses how German authorities, active in the areas of customs and structural funds, gather evidence in the context of OLAF’s investigation and coordination cases. Section 4.5 deals with the punitive follow-up to OLAF’s investigation or coordination cases in Germany. Section 4.6 discusses the admissibility of OLAF-obtained evidence in German punitive proceedings. Section 4.7 offers some concluding remarks.