Judgment — ECLI:EU:C:2005:339
Date: 2005-06-02
Language of the case: Italian
Court formation: Sixth Chamber
Based on: Treaty establishing the European Economic Community (1957)
Subject matter: Environment;Approximation of laws
Concepts: Environment
Procedure: Action for failure to fulfil obligations - successful
Origin: Italy

Summary of the Judgment Environment — Assessment of the effects of projects on the environment — Directive 85/337 — Projects of the classes listed in Annex II subject to an assessment — Member States’ discretion — Limits — National implementing measures — Breach — Infringement of the directive — Failure to fulfil obligations under Article 226 EC (Art. 226 EC; Council Directive 85/337, Arts 2(1) and 4(2)) Article 4(2) of Directive 85/337 on the assessment of the effects of certain public and private projects on the environment gives the Member States a discretion to decide whether the characteristics of a project belonging to the classes listed in Annex II to that directive require that it be made subject to an assessment of its effects on the environment, the limits of that discretion being found in the obligation on those States, set out in Article 2(1) of that directive, that projects likely to have significant effects on the environment are to be subject to such an assessment. Where, in the exercise of the power laid down in the second subparagraph of Article 4(2), a Member State defines general rules for determining whether projects falling within that article must be made subject to prior assessment of their effects on the environment before consent is given, the infringement of those rules necessarily constitutes an infringement of the combined provisions of Articles 2(1) and 4(2). Whilst such a breach of Community law also constitutes a breach of the national law adopted to apply Community law and national legal procedures would most probably have been capable of establishing it, that breach nevertheless constitutes a failure on the part of that Member State to fulfil its obligations, contrary to Article 226 EC. (see paras 19-20, 22)