SOME OBSERVATIONS ON THE ESSENTIAL CHARACTERISTICS OF THE OFFENSE IN THE NEW ROMANIAN CRIMINAL CODE Roxana Oana IONESCU * Ion IFRIM ** ABSTRACT: The authors examine the issues raised by the key characteristic of the offense according to the new Romanian Criminal Code in relation to the Criminal Code in force, pointing out some observations on those features of the offense in the new Criminal Code. KEYWORDS: criminal offense, guilt, unjustified imputability JEL CLASSIFICATION: K 14 The new Criminal Code adopted by Law 286/2009 1 by the Government assuming responsibility lies on the position of the necessity for a definition of the criminal offence among the provisions of the penal code, however adopting a formal definition of the criminal offence. In this way the new criminal code differs from the criminal code in force, which as we know contains a substantial definition (or semi-substantial) of the offense. In the vision of the Romanian doctrine (Dongoroz, 2000 ), the offense is a segment of life, a human episodic event that occurred at some time and could occur again, which is assessed by the legislator in comparison with his own criteria as being a threat to social order, establishing its prevention, repetition by using constraint (i.e. penalty). If we were to reduce the criminal offence to the most simple and schematic form of speech, we would say that criminal offence is a clash of wills: that of the offender and of the legislator, as well as the outcome of this collision, namely defeat (the crime) of the legislator’s will. The new definition is this way formulated, criminal offence is the deed provided by the criminal law, committed with guilt, unjustified and attributed to the person who committed it (Article 15 al.1.C.pen.). Designing, in this way, the essential characteristics * Ph.D student, Senior lecturer, “Spiru Haret” University, Bucharest, e-mail: rionescu_2007@yahoo.com, ROMANIA. ** Ph.D student, Researcher. st. III, Legal Research, „Acad. Andrei Rădulescu” Legal Research Institute of the Romanian Academy, e-mail: ionut_ifrim24@yahoo.com, ROMANIA. 1 Published in the official Gazette no 510 dated 24th of July 2009