The article discusses the trends of development of Austrian criminal law over the past few years. The first part of the presentation deals with the area of substantive law and the perceptible trends: the development of criminalization and the change of criminal law to a danger prevention law by creating so-called "preparation crimes". The second part of the paper shows the developing tendencies in criminal procedural law: the substantive reforms of preliminary proceedings and the strengthening

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... nd expansion of instruments of intervention. The identified developing tendencies are based on a description of the legislative measures of the Austrian legislator within the last decade; various international regulations and secondary legislation acts within the European Union had to be implemented. In the final step of the paper, the author comes to the conclusion that the trends of development within Austrian criminal law show substantial changes that must be observed criticallyespecially as far as the substantive areas and the expansion and tightening of instruments of investigation are concerned.