According to the sociologist Niklas Luhman trust represents a 'confidence in one's own expectation to another person's behavior. With such understanding of the etymology of the term "trust", its position in the everyday life has paramount importance in the social interaction of humans. Therefore, the understanding of the term 'mutual trust' must be derived from its definition as a basic fact of social life and a component of human behavior. This term has reached new level of meaning in Europe with the creation of the European Union. The whole apparatus of crossborder cooperation in criminal and civil matters in the EU is centered around the principle of "mutual trust" and its influence regarding "mutual recognition". In this article the authors will address these aspects from different point of views: cross-border cooperation in criminal matters and in civil matters in order to determine whether "mutual trust" really exist between the designated stakeholders in criminal and in civil matters, and try to identify the reasons for the drawbacks. Having in mind that these two fields are completely different, the authors will try to find common ground in the actual effective implementation of the principle of 'mutual trust' and understand the functioning of the principle in these two fields. Alternatively, their proposition is that the main stakeholders in the EU should use their resources in building a long term 'actual trust' instead of politically motivated 'mutual trust' that creates notable difficulties in the functioning of the 'mutual recognition' in the EU.

Republic of Macedonia is the candidate-member state of the EU and has started its High Level Accession Dialogue (HLAD), therefore it is of essential interest to harmonize its national criminal legal system to the EU law. In this article the author elaborates the impact of the EU's Directive 2014/42/EU considering the European framework for freezing and confiscation of instrumentalities and proceeds of crime in the European Union to the Macedonian criminal justice system. The level of transposition and harmonization of this EU Directive into Macedonian legal system is evaluated through the steps from the ongoing reform of the Macedonian criminal justice system. Hence, the author will examine the current Macedonian legal framework together with the Macedonian courts' practice regarding the implementation of the existing legal provisions for freezing, confiscation and recovery of the assets, together with the elaboration of the possible limitations and reasons for infrequent use of these measures by the Macedonian courts. In this fashion the author will detect the most common problems particularly with the question of the impact of the time limitation of the freezing of the assets during the criminal procedure, and will provide possible solutions for improvement of the national legal framework.

As part of its EU accession agenda, Republic of North Macedonia has performed series of reforms of its legal system in order to reach EU legal standards. As part of this agenda, improvement of the efficiency of the criminal trials was marked as highly relevant. New Law on Criminal Procedure, consisting many modern adversarial trial instruments, enacted in 2010, supposed to improve the efficiency of the Macedonian criminal trials. However, after a certain period we deem that it is necessary to reevaluate the effects of these reforms and their practical implementation. Hence, the author evaluates the Macedonian court's practice of implementation of the defendant's guilty plea during the main hearing of the criminal procedure together with the reasons for decline in the use of these instruments into the court's practice. The main reasons for such decline of the implementation in practice can be located in several areas. Such areas are improper implementation of the law, legal imperfections together with the length of the criminal trials, lesser sanctioning policy and absence of proper instrument for providing of the expected sentence as an outcome from the bargaining procedure. However, besides these already known weak areas concerning the implementation of these instruments in practice the author has detected an additional problematic area about the factual support of the guilty plea during the main hearing. In addition, the author analyzes the practice of evaluation of additional evidence in case of guilty plea, and the amount and the quality of evidence provided by the prosecutor as support to the defendant's guilty plea. Author concludes that there is a gap between the theoretical definitions of the guilty plea and its practical implementation, and provides practical proposals for improvement of the provisions of the Law on Criminal Procedure. He concludes that these amendments are necessary for proper implementation of the Law and of the protection of the defendant's rights and pertaining the impression of just criminal procedure in cases when defendant pleads guilty.

Bearing on mind the idea of the proverb “Justice Delayed is Justice Denied” Macedonian Legislator within the new Code of Criminal Procedure (CPC) has introduced several legal mechanisms for accelerating the criminal procedure. The most important instruments among them, by all means, are the Guilty Plea and Sentence Bargaining. In this article, the author elaborates the practical implementation of these CPC’s provisions and performs analysis of its implementation by the Basic Court Skopje 1 in Skopje, as the biggest and most caseload-burdened court in Macedonia, and by the Public Prosecution Office in Skopje. The analysis discovered several weak points, which should be properly addressed, both through theoretical scrutiny and through introduction of amendments to the CPC or through production of a general opinion by the Supreme Court. Only through these amendments to the legal provisions of the CPC can be expected to have improved court practice in a manner which would accentuate the real/just benefits of these instruments for accelerating of the criminal procedure. Several conclusions and suggestions for improvement or specific issues, which were determined as problematic were developed, such as: tackling the impact of a guilty plea by one of the codefendants to the other codefendants who did not plead guilty; treatment of the altered statement by one of the codefendants during the plea agreement and its use against the other codefendant; and the burden of proof and amount of evidence which is necessary to support the sentence bargaining process.

Over the past decades, many EU and non EU countries have amended their legislative and institutional framework on proceeds of crime confiscation to deprive criminals of their assets more effectively and to better manage and dispose of them. There are still, however, some under-researched issues that could greatly enhance the effectiveness and efficiency of confiscation policies. A first topic is the contribution that databases can give to asset management and disposal; the second one deals with a particular asset disposal option which involves giving criminal proceeds back to the communities affected by crime and promoting their use in line with communal needs: social reuse. This article responds to this question: what is the current situation regarding these two key issues in the Republic of North Macedonia?