In interpreting Article 260(3) of the TFEU for the first time, the Court of Justice of the European Union ordered Belgium to pay a penalty payment of €5,000 per day for failure to comply with the obligation to communicate measures transposing an EU directive, in a judgment delivered on Monday 8 July (Case C-543/17).
Introduced by the Treaty of Lisbon, Article 260(3) of the TFEU aims to provide Member States with a stronger incentive to transpose directives within the deadlines set by the legislator and to ensure the application of the law. To this end, it accelerates the procedure for the imposition of financial penalties for failure to notify a national measure transposing an adopted directive. Previously, the imposition of a financial penalty for non-compliance with a previous Court judgment may not have occurred until several years after the latter judgment.
In September 2017, the Commission brought an action before the Court of Justice for failure to fulfil obligations, considering that Belgium had not fully transposed Directive (2014/61/EU) encouraging the deployment of high-speed electronic communications networks, with gaps remaining for the Brussels-Capital Region. It requested that the Belgian authorities be ordered to pay a daily penalty payment of €54,639 (reduced to €6,071 in view of the progress made since the introduction of the appeal).
By its judgment, the Court concludes that the words “'obligation to communicate transposition measures” refer to the obligation of Member States to transmit sufficiently clear and precise information on transposition measures. The latter are therefore required to indicate, for each provision of the Directive, the national provision or provisions transposing it, where applicable, by means of a correlation table.
However, it is not for the Court, in proceedings brought under Article 260(3) of the TFEU, to examine whether the national measures communicated correctly transpose the Directive.
In the present case, this provision is applicable since Belgium has partially failed to fulfil its obligation to communicate by not having, at the time of the Court's examination of the facts, adopted the necessary measures transposing several provisions of the Directive in respect of the Brussels Capital Region.
See the judgment: http://bit.ly/2xyjqDd (Original in French by Mathieu Bion)