Contours of a principled corporate sanction policy in the EU: Exploring a constitutionally justified balance between criminal and administrative sanctions

The EU’s corporate sanction policy lacks clear theoretical foundations and underlying justifications, resulting in an unclear relationship between corporate criminal and administrative sanctions. While administrative sanctions were once seen as mechanisms for addressing minor societal wrongs, this view is increasingly outdated as core societal values, traditionally protected by criminal law, are now being transferred to the realm of administrative sanctions for corporate infringements. This shift highlights the need for careful analysis to achieve a justified balance between instrumental effectiveness and value considerations in corporate sanction policies. This article aims to outline certain contours of a European corporate sanction policy that promotes rational and coherent policymaking. By examining the practice of the Constitutional Law Committee of the Finnish Parliament as an example of an emerging policy approach, we propose that the EU’s corporate sanction policy should be grounded in a principled approach, based on a theoretically and empirically justified understanding of the nature of administrative sanctions and the distinctions between criminal and administrative measures.