The High Court of Cassation and Justice has established that authorities must respect the principle of proportionality both when issuing an act and when applying a sanction. If this proportion is not differentiated according to the seriousness of the offence and is applied in a unitary manner irrespectively of the individual circumstances of each concrete case, the sanction is no longer proportional.
Moreover, it has been established that the court may verify whether the principle of proportionality has been observed even if the act was issued in compliance with the specific procedure and no objection or proposal for amendment was made to the regulatory act.
In our specific case, the court analysed a legal article that established the sanction applicable in the event that not all electronic medical prescriptions prescribed offline and medical prescriptions with a single special regime per country were entered into the computer system within a specific deadline.
The High Court of Cassation and Justice has held that a legal provision which establishes a fixed sanction of 10% of the monthly contract value for a first offence, regardless of the specific circumstances of each concrete case, is not proportionate and annulled it.
