Case Law Trend: The Question of Interaction Between the Tax and Criminal Proceedings in the ECtHR Case-Law

Abstract

This objective of this study is to analyse the definition and the application of the concept of sufficiently close in substance and in time by the European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR) in terms of tax penalties. The Court implements this concept in Article 4 of the Protocol Number 7 of the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR) and intends to regulate the interaction between the two sets of (tax and criminal) procedures that deal with the penalization of the same matter. The progress of the case law is examined from the Glantz and Nykänen judgments in 2014 and the Kristjansson judgment in 2021. Two research questions are addressed: What is the connection in substance, and what is the connection in time? For the first question, the case law points out that the connection in substance requires the repetition in collection evidence. However, the boundaries of the relationship that should be established between the two sets of proceedings are uncertain and debatable. For the second question, the temporal connection has not yet been defined in case law, and its application overlaps with the scope of the right to a fair trial. Thus, it is seen that the boundaries in the both contexts need to be redrawn in order to eliminate the current ambivalence. ECtHR case-law, interaction between proceedings, connection in substance, connection in time, ne bis in idem, tax penalty, tax procedure, right to a fair trial.