Brussels, 21/03/2013 (Agence Europe) - Poland and Cyprus are facing sanctions for failing to transpose the renewable energy directive and Romania has been taken to the Court of Justice of the European Union for failing to fully transpose the EU internal energy market rules.
Renewables directive. On Thursday 21 March, the European Commission decided to take Poland and Cyprus to the Court of Justice of the European Union for failing to transpose the renewable energy directive (2009/28/EC). The directive seeks to promote renewable energy and had to be transposed by the member states by 5 December 2010 a the latest. Following warning letters and reasoned opinions sent in January 2011 and March 2012 respectively to Poland and in November 2011 in June 2012 to Cyprus, the two countries have still not carried out effective transposition of the directive. The European Commission is suggesting a daily fine of €133,228.80 for Poland and €11,404.80 for Cyprus.
Internal market directives. The European Commission is referring Romania to the Court of Justice of the European Union for failing to fully transpose the electricity and gas directives from the third legislative package for the liberalisation of the internal energy market adopted in 2009 which should already have been fully transposed by 3 March 2011. In particular, these provisions relate to the protection of consumers and some of the duties of the energy regulator. Despite having received warning letters in September 2011 and reasoned opinions in February 2012, Romania has still failed to transposed the two texts. The European Commission is proposing a daily fine of €30,228.48 for each of the directives that have only been partially transposed.
The fines proposed for each of these three member states takes into account the duration and seriousness of the infringement. If the Court upholds the Commission decisions, the daily penalties will have to be paid from the date of the judgment until the transposition is completed. The final amount of the daily penalties will be decided by the Court. (EH/transl.fl)