Brussels, 22/08/2005 (Agence Europe) - The Council of European Municipalities and Regions (CEMR) expresses serious concern at the recent European Court of Justice's ruling in the C-231/03 “Consorzio Aziende Metano” case (EUROPE 8996). In a press release CEMR says that “this decision damages the right of municipalities to decide what is the best way for them to deliver public services to their citizens”. CEMR added that “it also undermines long-standing “intercommunal” arrangements, under which groupings of local authorities join together to deliver local services across their joint area”.
The Court's argument is baffling, says CEMR secretary general Jeremy Smith because it is based on the fact that some of these shares might one day be owned by a private company! Smith added that “the EU institutions are supposed to be neutral between the public and private sectors in service delivery, but that is not how things are working out in the Court's case law”. He also denounced the incoherency between the Court ruling and recent Commission proposals on public service compensation and local public transport services (EUROPE 899 and 8995).
In 2003 the “Consorzio Aziende Metano” attacked the decision to directly award the municipality of Cingia de' Botti (province of Cremona, Italy) of the tender for services covering the maintenance, operation and monitoring of the methane gas network to Padania, a company (Padania Acque) with predominantly public share capital held by the province of Cremona and 0.97% by almost all the municipalities of that province including Cingia de' Botti. The Court estimated that the attribution without transparency of a public service concession by a municipality to a company that is majority public owned constitutes discrimination on the basis of nationality and to the detriment of companies from other Member States which could have expressed their interest in obtaining the concession.