Tax penalties: minor criminal charges?

In European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR) 15 November 2016, No. 24130/11 and 29758/11, (A. and B. v. Norway) the Jussila-doctrine was repeated once again. The ECtHR seems to have taken the next step in the discussion whether the criminal-head guarantees of Article 6 ECHR and other fundamental rights of the Convention should not apply in the same manner concerning tax fines as they do with ‘hard core criminal law’. However, as shown in ECJ 26 February 2013, C-617/10 (Åkerberg Fransson), the European Court of Justice (ECJ) is currently on a different path. In case C-524/15 Advocate General Campos Sánchez-Bordona has advised the ECJ to stay on its present course and not to follow the ECtHR. In this article the authors discuss the different approaches of the ECtHR and the ECJ