Opinion of the Advocate General — ECLI:EU:C:2002:309
Date: 2002-05-28
Based on: Treaty establishing the European Economic Community (1957)
Subject matter: Environment;Waste
Procedure: Action for failure to fulfil obligations
Origin: Ireland

summary of it to the Commission. 67. The Irish Government itself admits that its efforts to compile that inventory had, by the date on which the action was brought, produced very meagre results - to wit, two notifications, which cannot seriously be presented as adding up to a credible inventory. It then sets out the measures it adopted to collect the information needed to establish a realistic inventory. 68. Moreover, it is precisely because it was not possible, on the basis of those two notifications alone, to compile an inventory claiming to reflect the true situation that the Irish Government, in reply to the letter of formal notice, sent the notifications themselves and not, as that letter asked of it, a summary of an inventory which, in fact, did not exist. 69. It is to no avail that the defendant Government objects that the Commission indicated in its reasoned opinion that the process should be completed within three years irrespective of the nature of [the] procedures put in place by the national authorities. 70. In using those terms, the Commission had obviously not waived receipt of the summaries of credible inventories - which was not, moreover, in its power to do. It merely intended to draw attention to the fact that the Directive established an obligation of result and it is therefore unacceptable to claim, as does the Irish Government, that the Commission should have accepted that any inadequacy in the comprehensiveness of the notification is a matter for Ireland alone and does not mean it has failed to fulfil its obligations under Article 4(1). 71. With respect to the obligations under Article 11(1) of the Directive, a distinction should be made between those set out in the first indent, which concern the drawing-up of a plan for the decontamination and/or disposal of inventoried equipment and the PCBs contained therein, and those set out in the second indent, which concern the drawing-up of outlines for the collection and subsequent disposal of equipment which is not subject to an inventory in accordance with Article 4(1), and as referred to in Article 6(3). 72. With respect to the former obligations, Ireland claims that it fulfilled them by adopting and communicating by letter of 29 June 2001 the National Hazardous Waste Management Plan - a claim disputed by the Commission, which maintains that so long as the inventory required under Article 4 has not been compiled, one cannot speak of a plan concerning inventoried equipment. 73. I consider that objection by the Commission to be valid, in that I find it difficult to conceive of a plan in the abstract, one not proceeding from previously gathered data on the scope of the task which that plan must, precisely, make it possible to carry out. 74. For that reason, it seems difficult to follow the Irish Government when it claims complete autonomy for that obligation in relation to the obligation created by Article 4(1) of the Directive, particularly since Article 11(1), first indent, refers to inventoried equipment. 75. It must none the less be recognised that following the argument of the Commission would result in seriously curtailing the period of three years that Article 4(1) of the Directive grants to the Member States for compiling the inventory in question. Since the plan itself must be drawn up within a period of three years, to state that it cannot be drawn up until the inventory has been compiled amounts by implication to depriving the national authorities of part of the three-year period granted to them under Article 4(1) and, like it or not, therefore leads to the result that the drafting of that article may be perceived as misleading. 76. Be that as it may, I have to observe that the plan described by the Irish Government entered into operation after the expiry of the period of two months laid down in the reasoned opinion, which was notified, I would recall, in 2000. 77. With respect to the second series of obligations, Ireland states it complied with it by means of the Hazardous Waste Management Plan, while the Commission claims that it can find nothing in that plan to prove that the required outline has been drawn up. There again, without even needing to scrutinise that plan, I can only note that the time-limit set in the reasoned opinion was not respected. Conclusion 78. On the basis of the foregoing, I propose that the Court should dismiss the application as inadmissible and order the Commission to pay the costs. 79. If, however, the application were held to be admissible, it should be held to be well founded, a declaration of infringement should be made in the terms applied for by the Commission, and Ireland should be ordered to pay the costs. 1: - Original language: French. 2: - OJ 1996 L 243, p. 31. 3: - Case C-266/94 Commission v Spain [1995] ECR I-1975. 4: - C-159/94 Commission v France [1997] ECR I-5815. 5: - C-3/96 Commission v Netherlands [1998] ECR I-3031. 6: - Emphasis added. 7: - Case 353/85 Commission v United Kingdom [1988] ECR 817.