The First Senate of the Court in the public part of the plenary session in the form of written proceedings deliberated the case upon the constitutional complaint of Roman Unukovych on the constitutionality of a specific provision of Article 204³.1.2 of the Code of Ukraine on Administrative Offenses (hereinafter referred as the Code).
At the plenary session, the Judge-Rapporteur in the case Iryna Zavhorodnia noted that the applicant had applied to the Court for verification of a specific provision of the Code, namely the words “With confiscation of such goods”.
Article 204³.1 of the Code stipulates that violation of the procedure for moving goods to or from the district of an anti-terrorist operation entails a fine of ten to one hundred non-taxable minimum incomes with confiscation of such goods.
According to the applicant, such a sanction as a fine with confiscation of transported goods is unalterable and does not leave the court the opportunity to reduce the degree of administrative liability, to decide whether to apply confiscation in part or not at all, taking into account the specific details of each case and mitigating circumstances, and obliges the court to apply confiscation in each case of proving the guilt of a person in the commission of this administrative offense.
The subject of the right to a constitutional complaint claims that the mandatory application of confiscation does not meet the criteria of fairness, proportionality, and therefore the disputed specific provision of the Code contradicts the provisions of the Basic Law of Ukraine.
The Judge-Rapporteur also stated that in order to ensure a full and objective hearing of the case, the Court had sent inquiries to public authorities and scientific institutions.
The court examined the case file in the public part of the plenary session and proceeded to the in-camera part for a decision.
The public part of the plenary session is available on the Court's official website under the heading “Archive of video broadcasts of the sessions”.
