Punitive Administrative Sanctions After the Treaty of Lisbon: Does Administrative Really Mean Administrative?

Abstract

This article analyses the dichotomy between administrative and criminal sanctions in European Union law and aims to establish which limits do the policy goals of the European Union set for the national transposition of administrative sanctions as opposed to criminal sanctions. The article discusses the difficulties in differentiating between administrative and criminal sanctions and gives an overview of the evolution of the European Union sanctioning system from the early competence disputes to the rationale behind the post-Lisbon parallel harmonisation of criminal and administrative sanctions. The final part of the article uses these findings along with the jurisprudence of the European Court of Justice to ascertain the key requirements for transposing European Union administrative sanctions into national law, namely whether the policy goals of the European Union require the formal non-criminal classification of the sanction as a way of negative harmonisation of criminal law.