Brussels, 28/11/2013 (Agence Europe) - On Thursday 28 November, the European Court of Justice delivered a decision (C-576/11) imposing financial penalties on Luxembourg for failing to correctly transpose the 2006 directive on the treatment of urban wastewater (91/271/EEC). Luxembourg will have to pay a lump sum of €2 million and a fine of €2,800 for each day of delay in taking the measures necessary to comply with the first judgment of 2006, until full compliance with today's judgment. By way of its 2006 judgment, the Court (to which the case was referred by the Commission) held that Luxembourg, which had designated the entire territory of the Grand Duchy as a “sensitive area”, had not managed to prove that, according to the terms of the directive, the performances of eight of the eleven agglomerations having a p.e., a unit of measure of the average organic biodegradable load, of more than 10,000 had complied with the directive, as it could not show that the minimum percentage of reduction of the overall load entering a number of urban waste water treatment plants was at least 75% for total nitrogen. It therefore failed to fulfil its obligations. In 2011, having come to the conclusion that Luxembourg had still failed to comply with that judgment of 2006, given that six treatment plants serving agglomerations having a p.e. of more than 10,000 had still not complied with the directive's requirements, the Commission brought the present, second, set of infringement proceedings, in which it asked the Court to order Luxembourg to pay a penalty of €11,340 for each day of delay in complying with the first judgment, from the date of delivery of the judgment in the present case until the date of compliance with the first judgment of 2006, and a daily lump sum of €1,248, from the date of delivery of the first judgment until the date of delivery of this second ruling. In its judgment, the Court observes that Luxembourg now recognises that it has not complied with the requirements of the 2006 judgment, at least as regards two treatment plants. Consequently, Luxembourg is ordered to pay a lump sum of €2 million. This penalty takes into account the fact that it is apparent that Luxembourg is currently making considerable efforts and investments to modernise its water purification plants and that the number of agglomerations not complying with the requirements of the directive went down to six between 2006-2011 but it also takes into account the high level of environmental damage and the negative impact on public and private interests due to failure to execute this directive over an almost seven-year period. Should the infringement established by the judgment of 2006 persist beyond the date of the present judgment, Luxembourg will also be ordered to pay a penalty payment of €2,800 for each day of delay, as of the date of the most recent ruling. The Court considers that the imposition of a penalty payment constitutes an “appropriate financial means” to ensure full compliance with the 2006 judgment. (FG/transl.fl)