Brussels, 22/07/2016 (Agence Europe) - The European Commission is losing patience. On Friday 22 July, it referred Luxembourg to the Court of Justice of the EU for the country's failure to incorporate into national law the directive on labelling and packaging, which was to come into force on 1 June 2015.
The directive in question, 2014/27/EU, relates to the classification, labelling and packaging (CLP) of chemical substances and mixtures. It amends and merges five directives on health and security at work, aligning them with the CLP regulation, (EC) No 1272/2008 and, so, with the United Nations Globally Harmonised System (GHS). It seeks to have suppliers identify the hazards of the chemical substances using a standardised set of classification criteria, package the chemical safely, and communicate information about hazards to their customers through labels and other documents, such as safety data sheets.
The Commission says that the Grand Duchy of Luxembourg has still to transpose the text into its national law, despite a deadline of 1 January 2015 for transposition. According to the information the Commission has, the draft law and three draft regulations to implement the European directive would seem currently to be blocked by the Council of State which considered that the fact that a higher legal act referred, for certain of its definitions, to lower legislation (regulations adopted by the government), was contrary to the principle of the hierarchy of norms. After previously sending a letter of formal notice and two reasoned opinions, the European Commission is asking the Court of Justice to impose a daily penalty payment of €8,710 on Luxembourg until the directive is fully transposed into national legislation. (Original version in French by Sophie Petitjean)