Summary

The Substitutive Enforcement and Penalty Payment Act (SEPPA) regulates the right of an administrative authority to use penalty payment in order to motivate an individual to perform a current obligation imposed on him or her by a basic administrative act. More than 14 years have passed since the entry into force of the SEPPA. In theory, administrative enforcement proceedings should be one of the most frequently implemented institutions, besides administrative proceedings. The functioning of a legal order requires that the obligations imposed by a basic administrative act are performed either by the person himself or herself or by public authorities. In practice, the SEPPA is implemented surprisingly rarely, which is confirmed by the negligible case law of the Supreme Court regarding penalty payments. To date, both the Supreme Court en banc and administrative chamber have issued clear guidelines on how to interpret penalty payment. Although a lot of questions have been answered more or less satisfactorily, there are still several unanswered questions (such as the legal nature of a caution, contestation of a caution, or imposition of penalty payment in the case of an unsubstitutive or substitutive activity) as well as questions that need further interpretation (e.g., penalty payment as a proactive/preventive action versus reactive/repressive action of the state. The author aims to give a structural overview of penalty payment as a coercive measure and problems in applying it today.