Compliance as a strategy to avoid criminal, administrative and civil sanctions

Gerhard, Dannecker (2025) Compliance as a strategy to avoid criminal, administrative and civil sanctions. EUROPEAN INTEGRATION STUDIES, 21 (1 (SE)). pp. 15-64. ISSN 1588-6735

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Abstract

Compliance, which has found its place in the corporate practices of European companies, has changed from the backward-looking, traditionally reactive criminal and administrative offence law to a forwardlooking control system with a focus on modern prevention, which refers to the enforcement of legal prohibitions and regulations and the company's internal guidelines, including organizational measures within the company. This is supplemented by the pursuit of the goal of compliance integrity, the creation of a compliance culture within the company and the introduction of formal structures with preventative effects. This article shows the growing legalization and juridification of ethical and internal company rules and the growing importance of sanction-related compliance. One of the main reasons for this development is the increasing plurality of prosecutions in sanctions law - the plurality of sanctions, of sanctioned subjects and of prosecution and sanctioning bodies as well as the parallel administrative and criminal investigations in several states.1 At present, there is no guarantee that the various sanctions will be applied in a proportionate manner and that appropriate sanctions will be imposed. As a result, the sanctions imposed on companies can lead to overwhelmingly high penalties, which should therefore be avoided at all costs.

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