The institution of legal responsibility is the cornerstone of any branch of law. No exception is responsibility under economic law as an economic-law institution which, despite its importance in terms of protection of the rights and interests of participants to economic relations, has not received proper coverage in scientific research.

The purpose of the article is to reveal the specifics of economic-law responsibility and that of the application of economic, operational economic, and administrative economic sanctions to participants of economic relations.

The author elucidates the specific features of economic-law responsibility; the main one is the application scope, and this determines the ground for applying the measures related to the said responsibility (economic offence), as well as the range of those who may be subjected to economic-law responsibility, they being the participants to the relations in the economic activity domain.

 Economic-law responsibility is characterized by the following distinctive features: a participant to economic relations faces adverse economic consequences not only of property as well as of organizational nature; an offender, along with economic sanctions, is also subjected to operational economic and administrative economic sanctions; the possibility of determining the size of penalties in the context of intra-economic relations; the types and sizes (if such are determined) of economic, operational economic and administrative economic sanctions are set mainly (and in respect of the latter – exclusively) by law; an out-of-court procedure for the implementation of certain types of economiclaw responsibility.

The author concludes that provisions of the Economic Code of Ukraine (Ukraine’s EC) generally reflect the specific features of economic-law responsibility as one of the types of legal responsibility, and the specifics of application of such economic-law responsibility measures as operational economic and administrative economic sanctions, as well as declaring a debtor bankrupt. At the same time, it is emphasized that Ukraine’s EC, in terms of regulation of economic-law responsibility relations, needs certain changes, and hence the author proposes some major ones.

 It is noted that issues pertaining to economic-law responsibility require further scientific research with a view to creating a modern economic-law responsibility theory adequate to the existing market economy conditions resting upon the best accomplishments of national and foreign legal science and practice.