ISTOTA I CHARAKTERYSTYKA PRAWNA ANTYMONOPOLOWYCH KAR PIENIĘŻNYCH
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Date
2002
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Wydział Prawa i Administracji UAM
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LEGAL NATURE AND PROFILE OF ANTITRUST CASH PENALTIES
Abstract
To sanction effectively any violation of antitrust obligations, the Polish legislator has created
a system of administrative and legal measures comprising administrative sanctions and financial
sanctions, regulated in section 6 of the respective act. Cash penalties are administrative and legal
sanctions. Although they share a number of common characteristics, they also differ in many
major respects, so that the legal nature of these measures is incoherent, despite the fact that they
function under one term. Under the Polish Act of 2000 on the Protection of Competition and
Consumers one can distinguish three separate types of cash penalties: administrative cash penalty,
cash penalty aiming at coercion, and a penalty that is a procedural coercion measure. An
administrative cash penalty is imposed for a violation of the sanctioned antitrust legal provisions.
The grounds for its imposition are a failure to discharge one’s obligations imposed by the force of
a legal act. This penalty is a type of an administrative and penal sanction: an administrative penalty.
A cash penalty exerts coercion by coercing the penalised party into a specific action. This penalty
bears attributes similar to those o f administrative executive measures. The last group of antitrust
cash penalties is included among the measures of procedural coercion, which are a type of the
so-called procedural coercive measures. These measures aim at ensuring a proper course of proceedings.
Referring in the Act to each of the above mentioned sanctions with the same term of „cash
penalty” is an incorrect solution, as it does not eliminate the need to interpret the character of
those sanctions at the level of law application. Furthermore, it is incorrect to regulate markedly
different penalties in the aggregate in the same part of the Act. The legislator should increase
legal certainty in interpreting the competition protection law by introducing different terms for
penalties and by separating legal institutions of differing character within the same text unit of
a legal act. Such solutions would increase both the legal certainty and the possibility to decode the
legal penalty norms more easily.
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Citation
Ruch Prawniczy, Ekonomiczny i Socjologiczny 64, 2002, z. 1, s. 57-78.