ADMINISTRATIVE-CRIMINAL RESPONSIBILITY IN POLAND AS AN ALTERNATIVE INVESTIGATION AND SANCTIONING SYSTEM

Abstract

The system of penal law in Poland is complicated. It includes responsibility for crimes, misdemeanours, fiscal crimes and fiscal misdemeanour. Besides, there are administrative offences punishable with very severe sanctions. Their number has been increasing since the 1990s and now they play an important role as an alternative investigation and sanctioning system. They formally belong to administrative law, but their assessment from the perspective of the criteria of ‘criminal charge’ developed in the jurisprudence of the ECtHR allows to treat them as part of criminal law sensu largissimo. Therefore, this form of responsibility is also called administrative-criminal responsibility. This raises the question of the accordance of the rules regarding the administrative-criminal responsibility, belonging to administrative law, with the main criminal law guarantees. The aim of this paper is to present the general character of administrative-criminal responsibility and to evaluate the rules introduced in 2017 from the perspective of the certain safeguards appropriate for criminal responsibility.