Punitive Administrative Sanctions and Procedural Safeguards: A Blurred Picture That Needs to Be Addressed

Abstract

In order to ensure effectiveness of European Union law, the legislator progressively introduced punitive sanctions in various fields of administrative law. If the definition of punitive administrative sanction is already complex, its erratic use in the European Union legal order further contributes to the blurriness of the boundaries distinguishing administrative sanctions from criminal sanctions. Consequently, the current approximation of the applicable standards in the European legal order is insufficient as the standards imposed by the European Court of Human Right, the Court of Justice of the European Union and national courts differ, notably on the extent to which punitive administrative sanctions should comply with guarantees applicable to criminal law procedures. Overcoming the hurdles of approximation requires the legislator's intervention in order to set a coherent standard.