Is Administrative Law Still Relevant? How the Battle of Sanctions Shaped EU Criminal Law

Abstract

The idea of this chapter is to investigate the extent to which the EU legislator still invokes administrative sanctions to deal with irregularities in the market and explain why the history of administrative sanctions has shaped modern EU criminal law. Administrative sanctions have always formed a crucial part of the EU’s enforcement strategy, particularly with regard to competition fines as well as sanctions in the domain of agriculture and fisheries policies in the EU. Yet with the entry into force of the Lisbon Treaty, and thereby the granted legislative competences in criminal matters, one would perhaps have thought that there was no need for administrative sanctions in the EU anymore. The distinction administrative law versus criminal law used to be the main point of departure for the debate on sanctions back in the old days when the pillars of the EU still determined the realm of competence of the EU’s involvement in criminal law proper.