Administrative Sanctioning and Companies: How Protected Are They under the ECHR?

Abstract

Administrative sanctions abound in a modern legal system. From speeding tickets to exorbitant fines for antitrust, market regulation or data protection breaches – their regulatory range is truly broad and implications – not always easy to estimate. These type of sanctions are especially prevalent within the corporate context due to their flexible, variegated and less costly nature as well as the fact that their imposition is accompanied by less rigorous procedural safeguards. However, less procedural protection may quickly turn administrative sanctioning into arbitrary practices of punishment that may even send entire businesses out of existence. Can one seek relief in fundamental rights and prevent this dangerous tendency from materializing, considering the fact that companies are also subject to such rights safe for a few exceptions which are inimical to natural persons?
Against this background, this article seeks to look more deeply into the reasons why administrative sanctions are currently so widely applied, including a comparative outlook, and how the European Court of Human Rights (henceforth ‘ECtHR’) perceives and treats their imposition within the corporate context. More precisely, the objective of this article is to identify which Convention guarantees that are considered to be ‘ironclad’ for sanctioned legal persons, as well as to discuss cases, when the ECtHR is demonstrating a more lenient approach and gives less protection for companies when compared to natural persons.