Lengthy proceedings and driving disqualification

Case no. 99/2025

Judgment delivered on 20 August 2026 

The Prosecution Service
vs.
T

On 15 April 2020, T was charged with, among other things, driving a passenger car under the influence of psychoactive substances and even though she had been disqualified from driving.

On 19 March 2024, the Copenhagen City Court found T guilty as charged. The Court sentenced her to 20 days’ imprisonment and made it conditional on her not committing a new criminal offence during the one-year probation period. Referring to the lengthy proceedings, the City Court ruled that there was no basis for imposing a community service order. T was also fined, though the fine was reduced due to the lengthy proceedings. The City Court ordered in its judgment that T was to be disqualified from driving for a period of three years. The disqualification was made conditional with reference to, among other things, the lengthy proceedings. The Court held that the legal costs should be borne by the Danish Treasury.

By judgment of 11 July 2025, the High Court amended the City Court’s judgment and imposed a five-year unconditional disqualification on T, as the Court found that there were no grounds for, in entirely exceptional circumstances, making the revocation of the driving licence conditional. T was ordered to pay the costs of the case before the High Court.

The case before the Supreme Court concerned the issue of whether the disqualification of T’s right to drive should be made conditional
due to the lengthy proceedings.

The Supreme Court stated that in road traffic cases where no custodial sentence is at issue, appropriate compensation for lengthy proceedings may, as a general rule, be granted by reducing the fine by DKK 5,000 and half of the remaining amount, and by exempting the defendant, in whole or in part, from paying the costs of the proceedings in the district or city court, see the Supreme Court’s judgment of 16 April 2012 (UfR 2012.2322). In traffic cases where the defendant may be given a custodial sentence, appropriate compensation may be granted by waiving, reducing or making the custodial sentence conditional, possibly with no conditions other than a probation period, in combination with the cancellation or reduction of an additional fine and full or partial exemption from payment of the legal costs in the district or city court.

The Supreme Court also held that the road safety considerations underpinning the provisions in the Danish Road Traffic Act on driving disqualification mean that compensation for lengthy proceedings cannot be granted by waiving, making conditional or shortening the driving disqualification.

In this case, the Supreme Court held that this was an uncomplicated traffic offence case, and that the duration of the proceedings up to the conviction by the Copenhagen City Court had, to a significant extent, exceeded what was reasonable, and that this had constituted a violation of T’s right to a hearing within a reasonable time under Article 6(1) of the European Convention on Human Rights.

The Supreme Court further ruled that appropriate compensation for the violation could be provided by making the prison sentence imposed conditional on no other terms than a probation period, by reducing the additional fine otherwise imposed by DKK 5,000 and half of the remaining amount, and by ordering the Treasury to pay the legal costs in the District Court. The lengthy proceedings could not lead to the disqualification of T’s driving licence being made conditional.