Threat of fines results in a flurry of action

Date: 30/01/1997

By Rory Watson

TWO of the Union's founder members - Germany and Italy - have been singled out by the European Commission for special fines totalling hundreds of thousands of ecu a day for breaching EU environmental laws.

The landmark decision is set to be followed soon by a second wave of financial penalties on up to four other member states which have also failed to comply with European Court of Justice judgements.

The Commission's decision yesterday (29 January) to call for fines on Bonn and Rome follows months of agonising over how to apply its new Maastricht Treaty powers to recommend penalties, which must be approved by the ECJ, as an incentive to member states to implement Union legislation fully.

The level of fines proposed by the Commission takes into account the gravity and duration of the infringement and the member state's relative size and voting strength in the Council of Ministers. As a result, Germany is facing the heaviest punishment, with a daily fine of 264,000 ecu for not implementing EU legislation dating back to 1991 on the quality of groundwater.

The country's additional failure to apply Union standards on surface water and on the protection of wild birds has put it in line for further per diem fines of 158,400 ecu and 26,400 ecu respectively.

Italy was selected as the second test case because of the region of Campania's failure to implement six-year-old Union legislation on waste management.

The country has also been condemned for neglecting to put into place measures agreed by the EU four years ago to ensure patients were protected against danger from ionising radiation.

The proposed daily fine for the first infringement is 123,900 ecu and for the second 159,300 ecu.

Both Germany and Italy reacted quickly to the Commission's decision to clamp down on law-breaking states.

The former pointed out that only one of its 17 Länder - the Saarland - did not apply the bird protection legislation, and insisted it expected to implement the groundwater measures fully by the end of March and the surface water standards later this year.

Italian sources were equally confident that Campania's waste management plan would be in place by the end of February and the legislation on ionising radiation implemented by early March.

If both countries manage to keep to these timetables, they are likely to have their houses in order by the time the ECJ rules on the Commission's request for fines to be imposed.

But EU officials believe that the very threat of the penalties helped persuade the two member states to stop dragging their feet.

The Commission is now considering calling for fines to be imposed in a further 12 cases involving France (six), Belgium (four), and Greece and Luxembourg (one each).