Sanctioning under Article 260 (3) TFEU: much ado about nothing?

Article 260(3) TFEU, which was introduced into the Lisbon Treaty with the aim of compelling the Member States to implement directives in time, created the possibility for the Commission to apply before the Court of Justice for imposing financial sanctions on the Member State concerned in addition to producing a declaration of failure to fulfil the obligations stemming from EU law under the framework of Article 258 TFEU.

This article analyses how the Commission has interpreted the scope of this procedural option and how it has made use of it in policing Member State infringements. So far the Court of Justice has not issued a ruling under Article 260(3) TFEU, mainly because its practice has been to wait until the Commission withdrew its application, which means that very little information is available regarding the Court's sanctioning policy under this instrument. The silence of the Court may indicate that the aim of the new provision was merely to raise the stakes for non-compliant Member States by threatening them with a new financial sanction.