Brussels, 05/02/2001 (Agence Europe) - The European Commission has decided to continue with infringement proceedings initiated against Germany and Austria, two Member States that persist in their failure to comply with the Community legislation on freedom of access to environmental information. It reproaches them for not having resolved the defects in their legislation for transposing Directive 90/313/EEC, which makes it compulsory for Member States to guarantee public access to environmental information, within a reasonable time, at a moderate price and without the obligation of having to provide a specific reason.
Germany will receive a reasoned opinion pursuant to Article 228 of the Treaty for failing to correctly implement a ruling by the Court of Justice (ruling of 9 September 1999 case C-97/217), which had ruled against it for: a) failing to give access to environment information during administrative proceedings; b) not ensuring that information which could not be disclosed was separated out from other information to provide public access to those parts not affected by an exclusion clause; and c) charges for information being incorrectly made for information refusals.
The German authorities did indeed point out that new legislation was being prepared to remedy this failing, but the new legislation is still only at the drafting stage. Following infringement proceedings, the Commission increases its pressure on this Member State. If Germany continued to fail to come into line with Community law, the Commission would be forced to call on the Court to impose a financial penalty on this Member State (a lump fine or daily payment in proportion to the gravity and the duration of the failure to comply).
Austria will be taken before the Court of Justice (third stage in proceedings under Article 226 of the Treaty) for not having remedied all the failings of its federal and regional legislation, which had been notified to it in a reasoned opinion in July 2000. The failings concern: a) over-lengthy interpretation of the exceptions to the principle of free access to information, as set out in the Directive; b) the lack of guarantees concerning direct access to documents in all cases; c) the existence of derogation to the deadline given by the directive for providing a response to the requests for information; d) the incorrect transposition of the definition of organisations, other than public authorities, targeted by the directive.
The response from the Austrian authorities to the reasoned opinion shows that the directive was not fully transposed in the Länder of Burgenland, Salzburg, Lower-Austria, Carinthia, Styria and Vienna. The draft legislation provided by certain of these Länder should, of course, resolve most of the problems identified, but the formal adoption of the texts has still not come about, which is why the Commission has decided to go one step further in infringement proceedings.