Decision No. 4 of 30 April 2025 on Constitutional Case No. 29/2024
Referring Authority and Subject Matter of the Case
The case was initiated upon a request by a judicial panel of the Plovdiv District Court. The subject matter of the case is the constitutionality of Article 189h of the Road Traffic Act (promulgated in State Gazette Issue No. 20 of 5 March 1999, last amended in State Gazette Issue No. 41 of 10 May 2024), in the part providing for the inapplicability of Article 28 of the Administrative Offences and Penalties Act, on the grounds of alleged inconsistency with Article 31, paragraph 4 and Article 56 of the Constitution. Article 189h of the Road Traffic Act also contains a prohibition on concluding a settlement between the sanctioning authority and the offender (Article 58d of the Administrative Offences and Penalties Act), which is not part of the subject matter of the request.
Summary of the Court’s Reasoning
The provision of Article 189h of the Road Traffic Act, in its challenged part, establishes a prohibition on the application of Article 28 of the Administrative Offences and Penalties Act with regard to administrative offences established under the Road Traffic Act. Article 28 of the Administrative Offences and Penalties Act regulates the procedure for replacing an administrative penalty with a warning in cases of minor offences.
In this respect, the concept of a minor case enables the competent authority to exercise discretion by taking into account the particular circumstances of the offence and the characteristics of the offender, thereby preventing administrative penal enforcement from being applied in a manner that would be legally unjustified in light of the objectives of specific and general deterrence, or disproportionate due to excessive interference with the offender’s legal sphere. If the legislature does not expressly provide for privileged minor-offence categories and, at the same time, in a generalized manner prohibits the application of Article 28 of the Administrative Offences and Penalties Act - which allows the replacement of an administrative penalty with a warning - and if there is also no possibility of imposing an alternative penalty, the legal mechanisms available to the competent authority for the proper individualisation of administrative liability are impermissibly curtailed. It must further be noted that the sanctions prescribed by the Road Traffic Act are predominantly fixed in absolute amounts, without statutory minimum and maximum thresholds. In such cases, neither the sanctioning authority nor the court is afforded discretion to tailor the penalty to the circumstances of the case; both are bound to impose the penalty in the exact amount prescribed by law. As a result, the possibility of calibrating administrative liability in accordance with the specific features of the offence is significantly restricted, notwithstanding that such calibration constitutes the very essence of the principle of individualisation of liability, which administrative authorities and courts are required to uphold. Accordingly, by introducing a blanket prohibition in the challenged Article 189h of the Road Traffic Act, depriving both the administrative sanctioning authority and the courts of the power to substitute a penalty with a warning, the legislature has exceeded the constitutionally established limits of its competence. In breach of the principle of separation of powers enshrined in Article 8 of the Constitution, the legislature effects an impermissible encroachment upon the powers of other authorities by introducing a blanket restriction on lawenforcement bodies in the exercise of their functions within administrative-penal proceedings. Through the contested provision of Article 189h of the Road Traffic Act, the legislature effectively predetermines that every offender under the Road Traffic Act is, by presumption, deemed to have committed a non-minor offence, irrespective of the specific circumstances of its commission, the gravity of the unlawful conduct, the form of culpability, the motives and underlying reasons for the commission of the offence, the characteristics of the offender’s personality, and all other factual and legal considerations relevant to the adjudication of the case - matters on which the judicial panel is required to form its independent inner conviction. As a result, the legislature, in practical terms, obstructs access of sanctioned persons to a court vested with full jurisdiction to review both the lawfulness and the fairness of the penalty imposed and to carry out its proper individualisation. The restriction imposed by Article 189h of the Road Traffic Act on both the administrative sanctioning authority and the courts, in terms of their ability to determine a penal response proportionate to the circumstances of the offence and the personality of the offender, renders impossible the effective exercise of the right to a fair trial. According to established constitutional jurisprudence, such a restriction infringes the right to defence within the meaning of Article 56 in conjunction with Article 122, paragraph 2 of the Constitution. The proper individualisation of administrative penal liability requires observance of the principles of justice and humanity. The imposition of an administrative penalty is not, and must not become, an end in itself for the State; rather, it must, above all, correspond to the gravity of the specific administrative offence committed. The possibility provided for in the Administrative Offences and Penalties Act of exempting a person from administrative penal liability constitutes a necessary, constitutionally compliant and equitable legal mechanism in cases where even the least severe penalty prescribed by law would be disproportionate to the low degree of social harm posed by the offence and the offender. This applies where, in view of the absence or insignificance of harmful consequences, or in light of other mitigating circumstances, the offence displays a lower degree of social harm than ordinary cases of the same violation. The prohibition on the application of Article 28 of the Administrative Offences and Penalties Act to all offences under the Road Traffic Act compels lawenforcement authorities to impose penalties which, by their nature and amount, are disproportionate to the specific offence committed, thereby allowing State coercion to encroach upon the offender’s legal sphere to an extent exceeding what is strictly necessary for the legitimate purposes of punishment, which is impermissible. Where the principle of correspondence between the offence and the penalty has been compromised by the legislature in structuring the differentiation of liability - as effectively occurs through the blanket prohibition laid down in Article 189h of the Road Traffic Act - even a penalty that is formally lawful when imposed by a court would lack substantive justice. Such a result is constitutionally inadmissible, as it infringes the principle of justice in its essence as a material component of the rule of law (Article 4, paragraph 1 of the Constitution), which requires that any interference with the rights of the offender be proportionate.
Grounds for the Ruling and Disposition
Pursuant to Article 149, paragraph 1, item 2 of the Constitution (empowering the Court to rule on requests for the establishment of the unconstitutionality of laws), the Constitutional Court declares unconstitutional the provision of Article 189h of the Road Traffic Act, in the part reading “28 and,” on the grounds that it is inconsistent with the right to defence (Articles 56 and 122, paragraph 1 of the Constitution), the principle of independence of the judiciary (Article 117, paragraph 2 of the Constitution), the principle of separation of powers (Article 8 of the Constitution), and the principle of the rule of law (Article 4, paragraph 1 of the Constitution).
Председател: Павлина Панова