On 20 March 2018 the Grand Chamber of the EUCJ delivered three rulings on the extent to which the principle of ne bis in idem permits Member States from imposing jointly criminal penalties and administrative penalties of a criminal nature. The first case deals with the non-payment of VAT, the second with sanctioning of market manipulation and the last with sanctioning of insider trading.
These three rulings are important in view of two earlier decisions of the European Court of Human Rights on the ‘bis’ criterion and in view of the opinions of Advocate-General M. Campos Sanchez-Bordona in the aforementioned cases, in which he suggested the Court to develop an autonomous method for analysis of combined (criminal and administrative) proceedings diver- ging from the recent jurisprudence of the ECtHR.
In this editorial special attention is given to the Menci- case involving the imposition of both tax and criminal penalties for non-payment of taxes (in particular VAT).
An article that was published in EC Tax Review, 2018/4, pp. 182-185
Bruno Peeters (bruno.peeters@tiberghien.com)