In its conclusions delivered on Thursday 5 March in the cases C-549/18 and C-550/18, Advocate General Evgeni Tanchev has recommended that the Court of Justice of the EU should find that Romania and Ireland have infringed EU law and impose financial penalties on them for failing to adopt and communicate measures transposing the Directive on the fight against money laundering and terrorist financing (2015/849) at the expiry of the deadline of 26 June 2017.
On 19 July 2018, the Commission brought Romania before the Court of Justice for failure to notify any transposition measures and Ireland for notification of only one transposition measure.
In both cases, the Advocate General considered that a lump sum order was appropriate as a deterrent. He stressed in particular the “wide discretion” which the Court has in deciding whether to impose a lump sum, depending on the circumstances of the case and the attitude of the Member State concerned, in order to remedy the consequences of failure to fulfil the obligation to communicate on private and public interests.
Mr Tanchev therefore concluded that the fact that a Member State complies with its obligations in the course of the proceedings before the Court does not lead to the lump sum being deprived of its purpose, contrary to what Romania and Ireland pleaded.
For example, in the case of Romania, it recommends that the Court impose a lump sum payment of €3,000,000, whereas the Commission has proposed a lump sum payment of €4,536,667.20. For Ireland, it recommends a lump sum of €1,500,000 against the €2,766,992.00 requested by the Commission.
In determining those amounts, the Advocate General states that he has taken account of certain mitigating circumstances: for example, in the case of Romania, the fact that that country has never yet been condemned by the Court in that regard and, in the case of Ireland, the fact that the failure to communicate the measures was partial rather than total.
See the conclusions in Case C549/18: https://bit.ly/2TEfUlE and in the Case C550/18 : https://bit.ly/3cAqkLy (Original version in French by Marion Fontana)