Brussels, 20/02/2014 (Agence Europe) - On Thursday 20 February, the European Commission announced that, despite their having received several reminders, Denmark and Estonia are to be referred to the European Court of Justice (the third stage of the infringement proceedings) for failing to ensure that their national laws comply with EU environmental legislation.
Denmark has still not adopted plans for managing its river basins, even though the initial deadline to do this was December 2009. In 2012, the Danish authorities did adopt the required plans in response to a first warning but, once these plans were adopted, they were invalidated by the Danish courts. New plans are not expected to be adopted before the middle of 2014. These plans are essential for putting into place the measures needed for ensuring the “good status” of all bodies of ground water and surface water by 2015 at the latest, as stipulated in the water framework directive.
Estonia has failed to rectify shortcomings in its legislation that are supposed to transpose the directive on public access to environmental information (Directive 2003/4/EC, transposing the Aahrus Convention). Under EU law, there is an obligation to allow for a due process in case of refusal of information, which is absent in Estonian law. When requests are refused on the grounds that they concern material in the course of completion, the directive stipulates that such refusals must include the name of the authority preparing material, which is not yet completed, and the estimated time needed for its completion. This obligation is also absent from Estonian law. (AN/transl.fl)