European Union Sanctions

  • by
  • on 01.07.09
  • creampiesca.com
  • edit
  • The European Union can apply sanctions against member countries for not implementing in national law directives by the Union or - the going debate - exceeding the debt limits set by the Stability Pact, or possibly for other reasons. Has any country actually ended up paying such sanctions? Which ones, when, for what? Thanks, Myoarin


  • HI, any researchers looked at this? I am really interested in the answer. I think the EU's bark is worse than its bite, and also thought that for the search profis the info would not be hard to find. Please let me know if you think - or have discovered - that it is a more difficult question than I thought it was. Thanks, Myoarin


  • Hi Myoarin Since you ask . . . I found two examples of fines imposed on governments for breaches of EU law, a statement that such fines are "rare", and news articles giving a strong impression that no government has ever been fined for breaches of the Stability Pact. This didn't seem like a very definitive answer, and I dropped it. Now I know you're really interested and wondering why you haven't had a response, so I'm offering a few thoughts. There doesn't seem to be any ready-compiled list to help answer this question, and so the research requires both background knowledge of the EU and multiple searches as well. When I say "background knowledge", I mean, for example, that a researcher working on this question needs to know that EU law is enforced by the European Commission, and that the Commission cannot impose penalties itself, but has to apply to the European Court. One of the challenges in searching is actually implied in your question when you talk about bark and bite! How can a researcher separate actual fines from threats of fines? Another challenge is how to distinguish fines imposed on member governments from all the other fines handed out by the European Court, and a third is using EU jargon in searches: e.g "member state". Hope this helps explain the lack of response to your question! Best wishes - Leli


  • Hi Leli, Many thanks for your efforts so far and your lucid explanations. As you can see, I have upped the ante. I was presuming that there would be an EU specialist among the researchers that would just delight at the opportunity to do his or her thing - and that the task would be simpler. I did not know that the COmmission had to apply to the court. If that is true, then some kind of search for the court's decisions against Member States should be the channel, but have these - if they occurred - actually resulted in payments, or did the country manage somehow "to pull its socks up" in the last minute? No, under the Stability Pact, there absolutely have been no sanctions yet, dirty letters to countries about their breaching the pact (I live in Germany - and you, where?), but the the ministers of finance have to agree before sanctions can be applied, and I don't think they will ever set a precedence of agreeing - it could backfire on too many of them. I want to know if any countries actually ended up paying. The threat of sanctions seems to be expressed in terms of so many Euros per day until the country impliments whatever it supposed to - and the court's decision may provide a grace period - that the fine starts next month or the like. I will not insist on an all-inclusive list, but would like to know more than if sanctions where put through by the court. But even if no payment resulted, that would be interesting ("bark - bite"). Still interested? I hope so. Good hunting and best regards, myoarin


  • Hi again, Myoarin. The short answer is that two member countries have been fined for not complying with EU legislation. Greece and Spain had both failed to comply with environmental regulations: Greece over a landfill site and Spain over bathing water quality in lakes and rivers. It turns out that you are in tune with current thinking in some EU circles, when you say "The threat of sanctions seems to be expressed in terms of so many Euros per day until the country impliments whatever it supposed to - and the court's decision may provide a grace period". This issue is being pursued in the European Court in a discussion about "lump sum" fines. Advocate General Leendert Geelhoed has asked the Court to rule on this. He implies that many countries are slow to comply with EU law. (!) Governments often seem to be gambling on sanctions taking years to happen. When penalties have actually been imposed, the fine has been X euros per day or per year. More on specific cases of governments being fined in a minute - but first let me show you an article about this "lump sum" penalty question. The context is France's non-compliance with EU fishing law which has been going on since 1991. "EU court adviser raises stakes on legal sanctions A European court of justice advisor has launched a daring bid to significantly increase the scope of sanctions that the EU can impose on member states persistently flouting the bloc's legislation. If successful, the new sanctions regime may soon be applied to infringements of environmental legislation. Dutch advocate general Leendert Geelhoed wants the court to set a legal precedent in a case where the European Commission accuses France of failing to apply EU fish conservation measures, despite a court ruling against it dating back to 1991. Under the EU treaty member states face financial sanction once the court finds them guilty a second time of the same breach of law. According to treaty article 228 the court must then impose "a lump sum or penalty payment". In practice the court has imposed ongoing penalty payments starting from the day of the judgement, such as the daily fines on Greece four years ago for flouting EU waste law. But Mr Geelhoed says the deterrent effect of these payments is too weak. Member states can continue to break the rules until a second judgement and then avoid heavy financial sanction by complying quickly. The added spectre of an immediate and much larger lump-sum fine will encourage more rapid compliance, he says." http://www.envirocentre.ie/news.asp?id=31&cid=870 Now for the first fine ever imposed by the European Court on a member state: GREECE ====== EU slaps landmark fine on Greece BBC - July, 2000 "The European Court of Justice has imposed its first ever fine on an EU government for failing to comply with an earlier court ruling. The Greek Government had been ordered to close a waste tip on the island of Crete but still has not obeyed. The court fined them 20,000 euros ($19,000) a day, to be paid from Tuesday until the tip is closed. " http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/europe/818449.stm So how long did it take Greece to comply with EU law and what were the total fines? About 7 months after the final court ruling, with 4.78 million Euros due, the landfill site was closed. This was more than 13 years after the issue was first raised. "Fines on Greece brought to an end after ?4.78 million The case of the polluting waste dump at Kouroupitos in Crete can be regarded as closed. Greece was condemned on 4 July 2000 to pay a fine of ?20,000 a day because the dump near Hania did not meet standards laid down by EU legislation. On March 8 Greece informed the Commission that the dump had been closed down on February 26. The Commission has checked this information and has now been able to confirm the closure of the dump. This means that Greece has to pay ?4,780,000 in total, of which ?3,600,000 has already been paid. The Commission expects to receive the outstanding sums for January and February in April and May respectively." 21.03.2001 - EU Committee on the Environment, Public Health and Consumer Protection http://www2.europarl.eu.int/omk/sipade2?PUBREF=-//EP//TEXT+PRESS+NR-20010322-1+0+DOC+XML+V0//EN&LEVEL=4&NAV=S#SECTION5 Spain was the next country to be fined: SPAIN ===== "Spanish bathing water: Commission welcomes European Court penalty decision Brussels, 25 November 2003 The European Commission welcomes today's decision of the European Court of Justice to impose fines on Spain for not meeting EU water quality standards in certain Spanish inland bathing waters, i.e. rivers and lakes. The Court has ordered that Spain pay ?624,150 per year for every 1% of inshore Spanish bathing waters that continue to fail to meet the quality stardards set in the Bathing Water Directive. To date, there has been only one other judgment of the Court in which a Member State was fined. That also related to EU environmental legislation. " http://www.waternunc.com/gb/dg11en92_2003.htm In November 2004 a press release from the European Court stated that only two member states had ever been fined. (Quoted at the end of this answer) At first, I believed that Italy had also been fined, but it doesn't actually seem to have happened. More than a year ago the Commission said that it would ask the Court to impose a penalty payment, but there is no recent information about this at the European Court website - or anywhere else I've looked. Is it going to happen? Or has Italy complied and been spared sanctions? If you want to look for future activity in this case on the European Court website, the reference number is C-212/99: http://curia.eu.int/jurisp/cgi-bin/form.pl?lang=en ITALY ===== "Italy gets [?] 200,000 a day fine in pay row The Times - February 4, 2004 THE European Commission will announce a record fine on Italy today because of its persistent refusal to give more than 1,000 university foreign language lecturers the same pay and employment rights as their Italian colleagues. The fine of ?310,000 ( 211,000) a day dwarfs the ?20,000 daily sanction that the European Court of Justice imposed on Greece a few years ago for failing to implement European environmental legislation. . . . Now, 30 months after the last court ruling, the Commission has lost patience and taken the rare step of demanding that Italy be fined. The actual size of the penalty will be determined by the European Court of Justice, but its decision will be closely based on the Commission?s proposal." http://216.239.59.104/search?q=cache:CAX4M8nTtmYJ:www.iolfree.ie/~alexandros/index.htm " Italy fined [?] over foreign lecturers' rights The Guardian - February 4, 2004 The European Commission is today due to fine Italy a record 310,000 euros ( 211,000) a day for failing to give foreign university lecturers the same employment rights and pay as their Italian colleagues. The ruling is the latest in an 18-year battle by more than 1,000 "lettori" and reflects the impatience of the commission at what it sees as the continued intransigence of Italian universities. The fine is higher than the Italian government feared - last year it warned universities not to continue their discriminatory practices. ... In June 2001 the court ruled that Italian universities were discriminating on grounds of nationality - breaking one of the EU's bedrock principles. More than two years after that ruling the commission appears to have lost patience and said that Italy must be fined. " http://www.guardian.co.uk/italy/story/0,12576,1141174,00.html EU press release: "The European Commission has taken a decision to ask the Court of Justice to impose a ?309.750 per day fine on Italy for non execution of a judgement relating to the discriminatory treatment of former foreign language lecturers in several Italian universities." europa.eu.int/.../cgi/guesten.ksh?p_action.getfile=gf&doc=IP/ 04/164%7C0%7CRAPID&lg=EN&type=PDF There are also milk quota fines, but I don't think you're really asking about these. MILK QUOTA FINES ================ "05/10/2004 - Nine EU member states will pay a total of ?388 million in fines this year for milk quota overruns, nearly ?70 million more than in 2003. ... In a statement this week, the European Commission said that Austria, Belgium, Denmark, Germany, Ireland, Italy, Luxembourg, the Netherlands and the UK had all exceeded their quotas for deliveries to dairies, producing a combined 1.08 million tonnes more than the quota figure and thus incurring a charge of ?384 million." http://www.dairyreporter.com/news/news-ng.asp?n=55167-eu-fines-nine So, Myoarin, that seems to be it. Apart from milk quota fines, there have been only two fines on member states, both for breaches of environmental legislation. There may be another fine coming up for Italy's discrimination by nationality, and there's an ongoing case about hake fishing which may lead to a lump sum fine for the French government. Of course, I've only given you excerpts on this page. Clicking the links under the stories above will lead to more complete information, and I'll add a few more links below. By the way, I'm in the UK, where stories of other countries' tussles with EU legislation are not exactly front page news! Hope you find this answer helpful and perhaps interesting too - Leli Press release explaining the Advocate General's opinion that France deserves harsher treatment than Greece or Spain: "In relation to the principle of equal treatment, Advocate General Geelhoed states that the situation in this case is not comparable to the previous two cases where the Court has imposed a fine. He considers the infringement by France to be a serious infringement which had consequences, not only within France, but also adversely affected other Member States and their fisherman. Imposing sanctions of a different type are therefore justified by the different character and consequences of the infringement." http://curia.eu.int/en/actu/communiques/cp04/aff/cp040094en.pdf Most recent hearing at the European Court on the question of lump sum fines: OPINION OF ADVOCATE GENERAL GEELHOED delivered on 18 November 2004 Case C-304/02 Commission of the European Communities v French Republic (Failure by a Member State to fulfil its obligations, Article 228 EC ? Failure to comply with the judgment of the Court of 11 June 1991 in Case C-64/88 ? Failure to ensure compliance with technical conservation measures relating to the minimum size of fish, in particular hake ? Failure to record infringements which the national authorities could have found to exist and to charge offenders ? Penalty payment) http://www.curia.eu.int/jurisp/cgi-bin/form.pl?lang=en&Submit=Submit&docrequire=alldocs&numaff=C-304/02 European Court cases by year http://curia.eu.int/en/content/juris/index.htm GREECE: ILLEGAL LANDFILL SITES STILL A PROBLEM. Publication Date: 17-APR-03 Publication Title: Europe Environment Despite being ordered by the EU courts in July 2000 to pay fine totalling Euro 4,780,000 for non-compliance with EU standards on waste tipping in Kouroupitos in Crete, the Greek Government is still very much in the firing line for poor management of municipal waste. http://goliath.ecnext.com/coms2/summary_0199-2680871_ITM&referid=2090 25 November 2003 Judgment of the Court of Justice in Case C-278/01 Commission of the European Communities v Kingdom of Spain FOR THE SECOND TIME THE COURT IMPOSES A FINE ON A MEMBER STATE FOR NONCOMPLIANCE WITH ONE OF ITS JUDGMENTS. Spain is ordered to pay EUR 624,150 per annum and per percentage of inshore bathing areas not complying with the limit values of the Directive with effect from the 2004 bathing season. http://www.curia.eu.int/en/actu/communiques/cp03/aff/cp03105en.htm Lecturer could land Italy 200,000-a-day fine http://www.scilt.stir.ac.uk/Languagesnews/Italian/it20043.htm SEARCHES Searched BBC website for leads http://news.bbc.co.uk/ Followed up on Google Terms used in various combinations: eu european commission court fines fined fine "penalty payment" penalties sanctions names of countries dates "member state" government member countries Searches of European Court website http://curia.eu.int


  • One of those links doesn't seem to work. Try this instead for the press release about the Italian case: http://www.hri.org/news/europe/midex/2004/04-02-04.midex.html#04







    • #If you have any other info about this subject , Please add it free.#
    Your name:
    E-mail:
    Telphone:

    Your comments:


    If you have any other info about European Union Sanctions , Please add it free.