Administrative Fines in Europe: A Quest for Effectiveness?

For the purpose of enhancing sanction and deterrence effects, many scholars support the establishment of punitive damages involving public welfare in china. Because this legislative proposition involves a paradox and many conundrums yet to be resolved, this paper holds a negative attitude towards it. As an alternative, China can use the improved administrative fines and the criminal fine penalty to fully protect public welfare. Theoretically, civil public interest litigation (CPIL) should be divided into two categories: the pure civil public interest litigation (PCPIL) and non pure civil public interest litigation (Non-PCPIL). The former consists of CPIL involving indivisible public interests and CPIL involving unspecified large number of harmed private interests; The latter consists of diffusive CPIL and composite CPIL. In terms of law application, there is an “overlapping relationship” between CPIL involving unspecified large number of harmed private interests and composite CPIL. Only PCPIL involves the question of whether to use the proposed system of punitive damages for harmed public interest, or the improved administrative fines and the criminal fine penalty to attain the legal effects of sanction and deterrence. The so-called improved administrative fines is actually an administrative penalty combination composed of large sum fines, continuously calculated daily fines, the system of double fines, the system of both fines and confiscation as well as other administrative penalty measures. As the premise of offsetting administrative fines and criminal fine penalty, the connecting mechanism between administrative laws and criminal laws is actually a two-way lane - administrative punishment before the related criminal proceedings and administrative punishment after the related criminal proceedings. In terms of those two ways, their offsetting of administrative fines against the related criminal fine penalty must follow different principles and specific requirements. In order to fully protect the related public welfare, there should be exceptions to the principle of severe punishments absorbing the light punishments. In China, the legal protection of public welfare is extremely complex. In terms of the identification of the legal liabilities of the law-breakers, legislators and law enforcers should comprehensively consider the relationship and coordination among civil liabilities, administrative liabilities and criminal liabilities.

The article analyses the application of criminal-head guarantees to European Union legislation requiring Member States to lay down rules on administrative fines. EU legislation requiring Member States to stipulate administrative fines for breaches of EU law has been on a steady increase. The proliferation of such sanctions with little harmonisation of applicable procedural safeguards opens doors for misuses of punitive power. The first part of the article analyses the application of the Engel criteria and the Jussila exception for offences falling short of the hard-core of criminal law. The article highlights the discrepancies in the case law and suggests an alternative to the moral stigma approach in applying the Jussila exception. The second part of the article assesses whether the case law of the ECJ provides similar results and to which extent has the Union’s legislator harmonised or precluded procedural safeguards regarding administrative fines.

The so-called right to be forgotten has recently been given a lot of attention by the public, mainly due to its rapid development within the European Union framework. There are apparently two parallel ongoing discussions: the first one focuses on an abstract right to be truly forgotten, giving individuals a right to erase the records of their past; and the second one which focuses strictly on the institution of law provided by the European legislators. Interestingly, both perspectives refer to the same regulation which in any way is claimed to be rather controversial, inconsistent, excessive or unrealistic. I believe that such views are biased and find no grounds in the legal provisions. To me, the EU right to be forgotten is the regulation of little significance and practical applicability, and has incorrectly been elevated to the one of main issues in the field of privacy debates. In fact, what is called the right to be forgotten in EU legislation is a very technical mean of exercising one’s control over personal data. Therefore, I argue that the majority of commentaries claiming that the existing right to be forgotten is controversial err in doing so. In order to demonstrate that my argument has legitimate grounds, this paper in its Chapter I provides an analysis of the current and upcoming regulatory EU framework of the right to erasure of personal data, as well as examines the legal force of the ruling in Google v Gonzalez. The majority of the analysis is drawn on statutory interpretation, which reveals that the material content and scope of application of the right to be forgotten are in fact significantly limited; current framework does not allow the erasure of data merely at request and provides a requirement of balancing rights which is not just a declaration but enforceable mechanism. Subsequently, as there are possible grounds for controversies, in the Chapter II of the present paper I argue that the correct application of provisions on the right to be forgotten should diminish a dimension of alleged problems to the degree, where that institution of law should not bother critics; where the problem of ‘hard cases’ arises, the regulatory framework provides appropriate means of reaching compliance (common tool-box and delegated powers of the European Commission). Some provisions of the current legal framework in the EU raise doubts: e.g. shift of the burden of proof and administrative fines. These should not be feared of, as the construction of these legal mechanisms ensures their reasonable application in practise. Additionally, legal grounds for the upcoming regulation might also seem doubtful.

This article is based on the following question: does Nordic procedural law exist? Procedural law is often regarded as a national matter, and, unlike in many other legal disciplines, there has not been any official Nordic legislative collaboration in this field. Whether one can refer to procedural law as Nordic or not also has an impact on our perception of procedural law as part of a Nordic community. One way of examining the ‘Nordic-ness’ of procedural law is to examine the sources of inspiration used when reforming procedural codes and acts. These sources are found in the preparatory works to the legislation. This article surveys the sources that have been used to reform the procedural codes and acts in the Nordic countries over the last three centuries and shows how the objects for the procedural reforms have an impact on the choice of sources of inspiration. The survey also shows that the object for the reforms changes over time, and this influences the choice of sources of inspiration. Further, the use of the sources found in the preparatory works is discussed, and this brings us back to the starting point—namely whether, based on the use of the sources of inspiration, the procedural law in the Nordic countries can be described as Nordic.

This article aims to suggest the improvement scheme of criteria for calculating administrative fines for prohibited activities under the Telecommunications Business Act of Korea by improving the components of the relevant turnover-based method or considering alternatives for it based on the economics-based idea. From the economic perspective, the main objective of the legal enforcement through administrative fines lies in deterring the violation of law by altering the economic incentives of the violators in a way that induces them to refrain from the prohibited activities comparing the expected profits with the expected costs to be imposed through monetary sanctions. Since harm-based method by which the amount of administrative fines is adjusted to a decline of social welfare caused by the violation seems to be more accurate method in establishing the optimal level of deterrence, it is recommended to revise the components of the relevant turnover-based method by incorporating such elements as corresponding to harm-based method rather than act-based method. In addition, the introduction of calculation formula developed through harm-based economic idea could be contemplated as a supplement to the relevant turnover-based method. Against this background, this article proposes concrete alternatives to improve the components of the relevant turnover-based method. Particularly, various ways of defining the concept and scope of the relevant service which has the effect of violation as its integral element are suggested with some comments. As for supplementary methods, the ways of introducing the formula for calculating a decline of other enterprises' profits as well as a decline of users' surplus based on the harm-based economic idea and taking practical account of the size of illegal gains are also provided. The table contrasting the current relevant part of the regulation with the suggestion will be illustrated as a conclusion.

This article focuses on what is often termed the general (or public) sense of justice, GSJ for short. It illustrates the influence that the GSJ has had on various preparatory works in Swedish criminal law during a recent decade. It is often claimed that the GSJ is used as an argument in political discourse and decision making in the area of criminal law, especially to motivate criminalisation and harsher penal sanctions. Political points can be scored and general elections won by deploying a tough stance on crime. A problematic aspect is that by appealing to the GSJ, legislators create a way to legitimise punitive measures with little or no empirical support in criminological research. Furthermore, the very concept of the GSJ is unclear, contentious, and characterised by a plethora of interpretations. This article provides background on the GSJ in the Nordic countries and thereby gives context to some recent legislative work in Sweden. The article concludes that legislators frequently reproduce phrases which, under closer inspection, appear quite hollow. The GSJ therefore seems to be more of a vague reference used for political purposes as opposed to a representation of actual popular values.

The relationship and impact of a person's educational level on his level of welfare are examined conceptually and empirically. The empirical data were collected in 1972 and allow comparisons between the Nordic countries. The paper starts with a short description of the approaches utilized in studying welfare in the Nordic countries during the past ten years. The good of man is in two parts: welfare which can be approached objectively, and well-being, which is a subjective concept. The research done in the Nordic countries has focused mainly on welfare and less on well-being, at least when compared with research done on the continent of Europe and in America. Education is seen to have two roles in welfare. On the one hand it is a resource which people can use in improving their living conditions; on the other, it is a value in itself. Empirical data show that in the socioeconomic achievement process, education has a crucial role. In addition, well-educated people have slightly better living conditions than poorly educated people. Their housing level is better, their physical and mental health is better, etc. These slight advantages of the well-educated people should not be exaggerated, but it does seem likely that education actually functions as a resource which can be used in advancing one's level of welfare. The relationship between educational level and (subjectively measured) well-being is shown to be very slight and in some cases virtually nonexistent. This result is not characteristic of education alone: it has been found that objective indicators in general are slightly correlated with subjective indicators of well-being. On the basis of the empirical data used here it seems that education is similarly related to welfare and well-being in all the Nordic countries. Of course slight differences might be observed but the similarity is the major pattern.

NordVal: A Nordic system for validation of alternative microbiological methods

For long neglected, copyright exceptions and limitations have recently been the subject of multiple interventions by the EU legislator and the European Court of Justice, some of these bringing about landmark changes to the approach, nature and interpretation of such provisions. Taking stock of the long road travelled in recent decades, this article systematises the results which have been achieved in the field and highlights the outstanding flaws and inconsistencies which mark the route forward in EU copyright harmonisation. To this end, it offers an overview of the evolution of exceptions and limitations in EU copyright law prior to the entry into force of the Directive on Copyright in the Digital Single Market (§2), analyses the interpretative problems solved, created and left behind by the European Court of Justice (§3), and looks at the policy debates and preparatory works that led to the Directive, highlighting which reform proposals were successfully adopted and which ones were abandoned over the years (§4). It then provides a brief analysis of the innovations introduced by the Directive and their impact on the state of the art of EU copyright exceptions and limitations (§5), linking it to the recent decisions of the Grand Chamber (§6.1) which draw new boundaries in the discretion and flexibility left to national legislators and courts in balancing conflicting rights and interests in copyright law (§6.2), and commenting on the strengths and weaknesses of the new framework.

Despite similar societal systems that have given rise to the concept of a Nordic model, the vocational education and training (VET) systems in the Nordic countries are strikingly diverse. This article provides an analysis of why the role of apprenticeship in the Danish, Norwegian and Swedish VET systems evolved along different paths from the late 1970s until the present (2020). During this period, the most fundamental changes took place in Norway, as apprenticeship was established in most VET programmes through a major reform in 1994. Sweden took the opposite course in the 1990s and instead strengthened the statist and school-based nature of its system. In Denmark, a dual system with apprenticeship where the social partners have a decisive influence has remained largely intact. We argue that differing policy positions taken by organised labour are important in order to explain the three countries’ different trajectories over the last 40 years.

The editors of this Review have had the felicitous idea to mark its 50th anniversary with a special issue devoted to the time factor in international law, with one contribution devoted to the apparently declining importance of travaux preparatoires in the interpretation of treaties. Under Article 32 of the Vienna Convention on the Law of Treaties, the preparatory works of a treaty are only to be consulted in a limited number of circumstances, and then only as supplementary means of interpretation: when application of the general rule (combining a textual approach with an interpretation in light of the treaty's object and purpose) does not lead to satisfactory results. Under Article 31, paragraph 2, of the Vienna Convention, travaux preparatoires do not even qualify as part of a treaty's context; clearly, the Vienna Convention envisages but a very limited role for a treaty's preparatory works. Yet, most international lawyers will almost automatically include a discussion of preparatory works in legal argument, and will consider it vital to do so: an argument without paying due regard to a treaty's drafting history is an incomplete argument. It is this ambivalence which I hope to explore.

objetive of this article is the analysis of Brazilian public policy known as Programa Bolsa Familia (family allowance program) under a specific bias of the economic analysis of law: the theory of cooperation. theoretical foundation upon which settles the research is the book of political scientist Robert Axelrod entitled The Evolution of Cooperation, which proposes five basic pillars so that cooperation can emerge within a given system: increase the scope of the future; change the incentives; make the most selfless people; teach reciprocity; and improve recognition skills. Seeking the efficiency of the public policy analyzed, the article puts the organizational structure of the program, especially its receiving conditions and noncompliance by punishments, in a comparative table with the proposed cooperation points in order to propose legal and institutional changes in its functioning, able to promote cooperation between the recipient and the federal government.

The article discusses the criminal matter can be understood from the Economic Analysis of Law and his element called Principle of Social and Economic Efficiency. From the interdisciplinarity between law and economics that assumes the efficient allocation of scarce resources, the article, using the deductive method and the literature technique, investigates the use of the Principle of Social and Economic Efficiency, under the bias of the Ethical legal minimum are explanatory theoretical frameworks of the crime, in addition to punitive and persecutory vision, inserting criteria such as economic crime, social reflection and the external cost to society.

Owing to their common history, similarities in language and culture, long traditions in political collaboration and the shared Nordic societal model, an assumption is often made that the operational and regulatory context of universities is similar in the five Nordic countries: Denmark, Finland, Iceland, Norway and Sweden. In this article, we examine the relationship between the Nordic higher education institutions and their specific governments. The interpretation of institutional autonomy and academic freedom in the Nordic countries is discussed with support from recently collected empirical data, Nordic university legislation and the topical research literature. We describe the differences in legislation on academic freedom and the status of institutional autonomy, as assessed by a recent study by the European University Association and ask whether the autonomy frameworks of the universities in the Nordic countries are as congruous as their shared history and similar societal contexts suggest. We also ask whether the increase of institutional autonomy in the Nordic countries has contributed to a decline or rearticulation of academic freedom. We conclude that despite the differences between Nordic countries, the level of institutional autonomy is relatively high in comparison with their European counterparts, with most restrictions found in financial autonomy. Concerns about academic freedom are mainly centred on freedom of research, which has been restricted as a consequence of both increased institutional autonomy and new steering mechanisms.

The phenomenon of beggars in public spaces has become a social and legal issue that continues to evolve in Indonesia. On one hand, begging is viewed as an expression of economic necessity among marginalized communities; on the other hand, its presence is often considered to create social problems that require legal intervention. This study aims to address two main research questions: (1) how sanctions for beggars are regulated in Indonesia; and (2) what legal consequences arise when someone gives money to beggars. This research employs a normative juridical method with statutory and conceptual approaches to examine relevant legal provisions in the Indonesian Criminal Code (KUHP), Regional Regulations (Peraturan Daerah), and scholarly literature. The findings indicate that regulations concerning beggars are not specifically stipulated in the KUHP, but many regions have established provisions within Regional Regulations on public order. Sanctions for beggars may include imprisonment, administrative fines, and social rehabilitation. Meanwhile, individuals who give money to beggars are generally not subject to direct criminal penalties, although some Regional Regulations extend the prohibition by imposing sanctions on givers as well. This study concludes that regulations concerning beggars largely depend on regional authority and are administrative in nature, thereby highlighting the need for policy harmonization to ensure a more effective approach in addressing the issue of begging.