Abstract: The present article aims mainly a didactic purpose, being primarily intended to familiarize students with the institution of the additional (accessory) punishment, regarded from an evolutionary and historical perspective. It presents the transformations of the additional (accessory) punishment in the Romanian criminal law, from the original vision of the former legislator (legislation corresponding to the previous criminal Code, since 1968), to its current form (corresponding to the new criminal Code, of 2009), under the pressure exercised by the E.C.H.R.’s standards. Aside from this dimension, the article includes a critical analysis of the changes brought, in the period of vacatio legis, to the additional (accessory) punishment, as regulated in the new Romanian Criminal Code, by the provisions of it's enforcement law (Law no. 187/2012). Finally, based on these considerations, the authors propose a way of interpreting the text governing this criminal sanction, which tends to distance itself from the strict grammatical interpretation and they advance a proposal of reformulating the text, so that it would expresses more clearly its normative content, according to the interpretation argued previously by them. The article is structured in two parts: the first (the present one) mainly seeks to expose the regulation of the additional (accessory) punishment in the former Romanian Criminal Code and to indicate the main ECHR’s decisions which led to it’s change; the second part (which is to be published in nr. 2/2014 of the same publication) focuses on surprising (in a critical manner) the relationship between the ECHR’s standards and the regulation of the additional (accessory) punishment in the Romanian Criminal Code which entered into force on the 1st of February 2014.
Key words: additional (accessory) punishment, Romanian criminal law, E.C.H.R., previous criminal Code (1968), new Criminal code (2009), statutory (regulatory) development, enforcement regime, controversy.