Commission refers Austria, Luxembourg, Slovenia and Spain to the CJEU and opens case against Netherlands over transposition of public procurement laws

Further information:

The 4 Member States have still not notified the transposition of the following legislation:

+ Austria and Luxembourg [Directives 2014/23/EU, 2014/24/EU, 2014/25/EU]
+ Spain [Directives 2014/23/EU, 2014/25/EU]
+ Slovenia [Directive 2014/23/EU]

The Commission calls on the CJEU to impose, depending on the Directive concerned, a daily penalty payment of €52,972, €42,377.6 and €42,377.6 for Austria, of €12,920, €11,628 and €11,628 for Luxembourg, of €8,992.32 for Slovenia and of €61,964.32 and €123,928.64 for Spain, from the day of the judgement until these Directives are fully enacted and in force in national law.

The Commission also considers that the Netherlands breached the transparency obligation in Directive 2014/23/EU and Directive 2014/24/EU. The country was given two months to reply to the arguments raised by the Commission to avoid the escalation of the infringement procedure.

Background information:

All Member States were obliged to notify the transposition of the latest public procurement rules by 18 April 2016. The Commission sent letters of formal notice to 21 Member States that had not transposed these rules in May 2016 and followed up with reasoned opinions addressed to 15 of those Member States in December 2016.

The European Commission decided to take Austria, Luxembourg, Slovenia and Spain to the Court of Justice of the European Union over the failure to notify complete transposition of rules on public procurement and concessions (Directives 2014/23/EU, 2014/24/EU, 2014/25/EU) into national law.

The Commission also sent a letter of formal notice to the Netherlands, since did not qualified the Dutch housing corporations as contracting authorities even though they are involved in public contracts.