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A statue of Lady Justice in London. The EU leaves it up to individual member states to determine penalties for infringements of EU law (Photo: James Burke)

Feature

'Patchwork' penalties - the EU's perennial fines problem

A statue of Lady Justice in London. The EU leaves it up to individual member states to determine penalties for infringements of EU law (Photo: James Burke)

It is a logic that most parents will be familiar with: if you set rules, you also need to establish what happens when those rules are broken.

When it comes to setting rules in the EU, however, logic is not the only factor involved.

A consistent problem, arising from the way EU legislation is designed, is that penalties for breaking EU rules are not set consistently across the bloc.

In recent years, EUobserver has reported on several examples of EU rules for which violation i...

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