Order of the Court of Bergamo 16 September 2015

Through this order, the Court of Bergamo asked a preliminary ruling of the EU Court of Justice on the issue of whether Italian legislation on tax crimes (legislative decree No. 74/2000) is or not consistent with Article 50 of the EU Charter of Fundamental Rights (concerning the ne bis in idem principle), insofar it allows that a person who has received an administrative sanction for the offense of failure of paying VAT (Article 10 ter of mentioned legislative decree) may be prosecuted by a criminal court for the same fact, and receive a second (penal) sanction. The Tribunal asked a preliminary ruling to the EU Court of Justice also because, according to the jurisprudence of the European Court of Human Rights, mentioned provisions in Italian legislation are in breach of the substantive content of the ne bis in idem principle as set out in Article 4 of the 7th Protocol to the ECHR.