If you want to be successful in your administrative offence case you must follow the rules of procedure.
If you fail to fulfil your duties and do not comply with the procedure, you may contribute to a failure to observe fair trial standards in your own procedure. This will most probably have a negative effect on your case.
Furthermore, to be able to claim a violation of your rights, you have to ensure that you have fulfilled your duties in the proceeding which are related to the violation about which you complain.
If you fail to fulfil your obligations, in most cases you won’t be able to claim a violation of your rights or receive compensation later on.
example You will not be able to complain that you have not had access to a court of appeal if you lodged the appeal after the deadline.
Your main duties in an administrative proceeding and a court proceeding include the following:
Burden to propose evidence
An administrative authority is obliged to establish facts of the case. An administrative proceeding is not an adversarial type of proceeding; therefore, it is the duty of an institution that want to impose an administrative penalty on you to prove that you have committed an administrative offence.
A party of an administrative proceeding or of a court administrative trial must be able to propose evidence that may prove facts the party claims. Otherwise, the person charged with an administrative offence will limit the possibility not to be convicted of an offence. Therefore, the main duty of the party willing to win the case is to propose and ideally directly provide evidence. If not able to provide evidence directly, an administrative authority or the court in a later stage may ensure relevant evidence proposed by you. Read more about evidence.
Your address
If you have not provided an address where you can be reached by the court, the court will use your address officially registered as your permanent address. Therefore, you have an obligation to be reachable at that address. You will not be able to claim that you did not know about a hearing if you simply missed the notification in your mailbox.
Time limits
When making requests to an administrative authority or to a court, you have to comply with the time limits for each claim or request, if such time limits are set either by an administrative institution or by the court or by law.
Obligations during the proceedings
You also have other important obligations during the proceedings. For example, you have an obligation:
- to appear at the time and place designated by the official leading the proceedings
- not to obstruct or delay the proceedings
- observe the procedure during procedural activities