Luxembourg, 13/09/2004 (Agence Europe) - The European Court of Justice has found Belgium, France, Luxembourg and Greece guilty of violating EU legislation in various domains.
Belgium has been found guilty of only granting 'career break' subsidies to people established or living in Belgium, disadvantaging people living on the borders of another country but working in Belgium. In this way, Belgium infringed EU rules on the free circulation of individuals.
The Court rejected Belgium's argument that the requirement to reside in Belgium had been scrapped in October 2002, pointing out that a Member State cannot avoid conviction simply by changing administrative practices, since these by nature can be changed back again.
France is found guilty of failing to ensure that people can continue to keep the same telephone number when changing to a different operator, as required by the 1997 directive on the telecoms interconnection, which came into force on 1 January 2000.
The French government admitted that the portability of telephone numbers in France was not fully accessible within the deadline set in the Commission's reasoned opinion (30 June 2001).
The Court of Justice notes that when the deadline had passed, it was not possible for people registered with all the different service providers to keep the same number allowing access to free call services.
Luxembourg failed to take the necessary measures to abide by the 1998 directive on legal protection for biotech inventions. Under Article 1 of the directive, the deadline of 30 July 2000 was set, and in a reasoned opinion, Luxembourg was given until the end of February 2002 to meet the requirements of the directive.
In its defence, the Luxembourg government explained that it had published draft legislation on 7 June 2000 to amend its legislation on patented inventions, a necessary step in the process of transposing the EU directive. The Luxembourg Chamber of Deputies requested the renegotiation of a series of articles of the directive, but it had not been possible to renegotiate them. The Chamber of Deputies' Ethics Committee met on 16 December 2003 with the aim of finding a satisfactory solution, explained the Luxembourg government. The Court of Justice found Luxembourg guilty because at the end of February 2002, it failed to apply the legislation in question and had hence missed the deadline.
Greece kept a 1993 regulation allowing the Greek Technical Board (Technico Epimelitirio Elladas), with which a person must be registered in order to be able to pursue the profession of architect in Greece, to systematically take a very long time to register Community nationals holding diplomas which have not been awarded in Greece. The obligation for architects to provide a certificate from the competent authority in their Member State (guaranteeing that Greek requirements for architects have been met) was only abolished in February 2004 (in a presidential decree), four years too late since the deadline set in a reasoned opinion from the European Commission was the end of April 2000.
The Court of Justice implicitly recognised that the Greek Technical Board is entitled to check architects' skills with regard to the prevention of risks associated with earthquakes, but the Court noted that this 'cannot justify either the registration of architects over such lengthy periods or the delay noted in sending the persons concerned requests for the submission of missing documents' (which should normally take three months according to the directive).