Article 25Penalties

1. Without prejudice to the obligations of Member States under Directive 2008/99/EC of the European Parliament and of the Council (23), Member States shall lay down rules on penalties applicable to infringements of this Regulation by operators and traders and shall take all measures necessary to ensure that they are implemented. Member States shall notify the Commission of those rules and of those measures and shall notify it, without delay, of any subsequent amendments affecting them.

2. The penalties provided for in paragraph 1 shall be effective, proportionate and dissuasive. Those penalties shall include:

(a)

fines proportionate to the environmental damage and the value of the relevant commodities or relevant products concerned, calculating the level of such fines in such way as to ensure that they effectively deprive those responsible of the economic benefits derived from their infringements, and gradually increasing the level of such fines for repeated infringements; in the case of a legal person, the maximum amount of such a fine shall be at least 4 % of the operator’s or trader’s total annual Union-wide turnover in the financial year preceding the fining decision, calculated in accordance with the calculation of aggregate turnover for undertakings laid down in Article 5(1) of Council Regulation (EC) No 139/2004 (24), and shall be increased, where necessary, to exceed the potential economic benefit gained;

(b)

confiscation of the relevant products concerned from the operator and/or trader;

(c)

confiscation of revenues gained by the operator and/or trader from a transaction with the relevant products concerned;

(d)

temporary exclusion for a maximum period of 12 months from public procurement processes and from access to public funding, including tendering procedures, grants and concessions;

(e)

temporary prohibition from placing or making available on the market or exporting relevant commodities and relevant products, in the event of a serious infringement or of repeated infringements;

(f)

prohibition from exercising the simplified due diligence set out in Article 13 in the event of a serious infringement or of repeated infringements.

The article continues in the official text.