LA PROBLEMÁTICA UTILIZACIÓN DEL PRINCIPIO DE PRECAUCIÓN COMO REFERENTE DE LA POLÍTICA CRIMINAL DEL MODERNO DERECHO PENAL. ¿HACIA UN DERECHO PENAL DEL MIEDO A LO DESCONOCIDO O HACIA UNO REALMENTE PREVENTIVO?

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This paper examines whether the so-called precautionary principle, initially developed and used to legitimize administrative environmental protection against the enormous and quite frequently uncertain risks derived from the use of some of the latest scientific and technological developments (biotechnology, nanotechnology, etc.), could also achieve a legitimate use in criminal law as a legal instrument targeted to implement its effective and adequate control. Within this goal, a variety of definitions of the precautionary principle are analysed to determine to what extent a weak or less radical definition, especially used in the EU, could be used to define the level of the tolerable risk from different offences without breaking any of the requirements coming up from minimal intervention and guilt principles that limit, and simultaneously legitimize, the criminal law of a genuine rule of law.