With the entry into force of the Criminal Code, the legislator broke with the regulation on the age of criminal responsibility, which had been in force for nearly sixty years. Although it set the age of criminal responsibility at fourteen, in the case of certain violent crimes against specific persons, it lowered this age to twelve and made criminal responsibility conditional on the perpetrator having the insight necessary to recognize the consequences of the crime at the time of its commission. Although the concept of discernment is not entirely unknown in criminal law, it did not appear in criminal law regulations in the decades preceding the codification of the Criminal Code, nor was the concept of discernment defined when the new regulations were introduced.  In view of all this, my study aims to provide an overview of the regulation of the age of criminal responsibility, in particular the historical changes in the regulation, the concept of discernment, the provisions relating to the assessment of discernment, the scope of judicial discretion in the assessment of discernment, and Constitutional Court Decision 25/2022. (X.26.) relating to a specific criminal case. 

Translated with DeepL.com (free version)