Greetings,
As you may know, many pieces of legislation, when they are adopted (let's say for example the Employment Relations Act), usually have penal provisions at the end which read something like this:
(2) An employer - natural person who commits an offence under the preceding paragraph shall be liable to a fine of at least €2048.
Such penalties are intended to ensure that the law is respected and properly enforced. Now, how the inspection functions to detect and sanction such offences is a subject for another debate, but what I find controversial and would suggest is a change in the LIMITATION of the penalties.
The problem is that many times companies, individuals, in short offenders, would rather pay a fine if they are detected by the inspectorate than obey the law at all. (Either the fines are ridiculously low or they are disproportionately smaller than the consequences of obeying the law).
I therefore propose that the penalty provisions be written down and enforced according to the principle of attachment, say as in Article 73 of the ZPOmK-1 (Act on the Prevention of Restraints of Competition; Official Journal of the RS, No 36/08 of 11.4.2008).
(1) A fine of up to ten per cent of the annual turnover of the undertaking in the preceding business year shall be imposed for....
For a small company, this amounts to, say, €4000, but for a larger company that could be subject to such a fine, such a fine would be significantly higher, which would then have a real impact on compliance with the law.
A similar proposal has already been made for the assessment of fines for traffic offences on the basis of income and assets (user proposal: feniks)
Please comment and make any additional suggestions!
Thank you =)