Brussels, 20/06/2013 (Agence Europe) - It flows quite logically from Campania's bad management of waste in persistent breach of EU legislation that Italy has been taken before the Court of the Justice of the EU for the second time for failure to implement the Court's ruling of 2010. This time, Italy runs the risk of having to pay huge fines amounting to millions of euro. This was decided by the European Commission on Thursday 20 June, finally carrying out a threat that has been constantly brandished but without great effect to date. The ruling delivered by the Court of Justice in March 2010 (Case C-297/08) highlighted that, in Campania, there was no adequate, integrated waste management system, which is a major infringement of the requirements of the framework directive on waste.
In this second action, the Commission calls on the Court to impose a penalty payment of €25 million on Italy (€21,067 daily between the two Court procedures) and a daily penalty payment of €256,819.20 from the second Court ruling and for as long as the infringement continues. This should provide sufficient incentive for the Italian authorities to do what is necessary, the European Commission hopes, losing patience after having used every possible method of consultation with the Italian authorities to bring them into line with EU law, as those authorities had requested. Since March 2010, the Commission and the Italian authorities have been in permanent contact, and a technical meeting between Commission experts and the Italian authorities was even held in March 2012 in Rome to reach agreement on the key elements of a special waste management plan paying special attention to dangerous waste. At the time, the meeting was presented by the environment commissioner, Janez Potocnik, as the last chance meeting before referral to the Court of Justice (see EUROPE 10539).
In order to give substance to their new water management plan adopted in January 2012, the Italian authorities did indeed present, in June 2012, a programme of measures to organise the management of waste in that region until 2016, the date scheduled for new waste treatment centres to be up and running. However, 2016 is much too far away, the Commission believes, all the more as, with the delay incurred in the construction of most of the installations, there is the risk that a large number of them will not be ready by end 2016. Concerned by the uncertain future of six million tonnes of bales of waste stocked at various sites in Campania awaiting an incinerator that has not yet been built, and about the low rate of selective waste collection in the province of Naples (only 20%), the Commission has decided that no more time can be lost. The saga of the waste crisis in Campania not only has a detrimental effect on the quality of the environment but also on public health. (AN/transl.jl)