Judgment — ECLI:EU:T:2007:191
Date: 2007-06-27
Language of the case: Dutch
Court formation: Fourth Chamber
Based on: Treaty establishing the European Economic Community (1957)
Subject matter: Environment;Approximation of laws
Concepts: General
Procedure: Action for annulment - unfounded
Origin: Netherlands

Summary of the Judgment Approximation of laws – Article 95 EC – Approval procedure for derogating national provisions (Art. 95(5) EC) In order to introduce derogating national provisions on matters in respect of which a Community harmonisation measure has already been adopted, a Member State must, under Article 95(5) EC, be able to show that the national measures are based on new scientific evidence and respond to a problem which is specific to that State and which has appeared after the harmonisation measure’s adoption. That provision applies, in particular, to cases where a new phenomenon arises in all or part of a Member State’s territory, which has negative effects on the environment or the working environment and which could not be taken into account in the preparation of the harmonised rules and to which it is appropriate to apply a remedy at the outset at the national level, without waiting for an amendment to the Community legislation. Such an amendment could in fact be unsuitable to resolve the problem established, either because of the purely local nature of the phenomenon, or because of the particular characteristics which it exhibits locally and which are incompatible with the delays inherent in the negotiation and entry into force of new harmonised rules. By referring to the case of a problem specific to a Member State which has arisen after the adoption of a Community harmonisation measure, Article 95(5) EC therefore excludes the possibility of national provisions being introduced based upon it which derogate from harmonised rules in order to deal with a general environmental danger in the Community. Any problem which arises in terms which are on the whole comparable throughout the Member States and which lends itself, therefore, to harmonised solutions at Community level is general in nature and is, consequently, not specific within the meaning of Article 95(5) EC. It is therefore necessary, in order correctly to interpret Article 95(5) EC, to envisage the requirement of national specificity of a problem essentially from the angle of the aptness or inaptness of the harmonisation of the applicable Community rules to confront adequately the difficulties encountered locally, since the established inaptness of those rules justifies the introduction of national measures. (see paras 59, 61-64)