3.

Article 14 (1) of the directive provides that: ‘Any installation, establishment or undertaking which produces, holds and/or disposes of toxic and dangerous waste shall : (i) keep a record of the quantity, nature, physical and chemical characteristics and origin of such waste, and of the methods and sites used for disposing of such waste, including the dates of receipt and disposal; (ii) and/or make this information available to the competent authorities on request.’ In both its reasoned opinion and its application, the Commission seemed to consider that one aspect of Belgium's failure to fulfil its obligations relating to the aforesaid provision was the fact that its legislation did not impose an obligation on installations, establishments or undertakings which produce, hold and/or dispose of toxic and dangerous waste to keep a record containing a wide range of information. Article 14 (1), however, provides that the obligation to keep a record of certain information and the obligation to make that information available to the competent authorities on request are to be imposed either cumulatively or alternatively (as is clear from the use of the words ‘and/or’). In response to a request from the Court to clarify its position on that point, the Commission rectified its claim in that regard, although it took the view that the obligation to keep a record was the most effective means of achieving the objectives of the directive. However, as that was not supported by the wording of the directive, the Commission maintained its claim only as regards the fact that Belgium, in choosing to impose on traders the obligation to submit a declaration, as provided for in the second indent of Article 14 (1), had failed to impose on them the obligation to make available all the information required by the first indent of Article 14 (1) for the purposes of the record. Articles 17 and 18 of the Royal Decree of 9 February 1976 must be regarded as implementing the obligations imposed by the directive only in part. Although, on the one hand, those provisions require declarations to be submitted every year, every month or case by case, on the other hand they do not require those declarations to set out all the information referred to in the first indent of Article 14 (1) of the directive. Clearly, the national legislation does not require traders to provide information concerning the physical and chemical characteristics of the waste or the dates of receipt and disposal of such waste. The failure to indicate waste disposal sites is more difficult to establish in view of the reference in Article 18 of the royal decree to the ‘destination’ of such waste, but the wording is unclear and leaves room for doubt, in this respect too, as to whether the directive has been fully transposed into national law by the Belgian legislation. Moreover, the Belgian legislation provides only that the declarations must include information concerning waste disposal methods when the destruction, neutralization or disposal of the waste is carried out by the trader producing it. In its defence and rejoinder, the Belgian Government evinces the intention of amending the Royal Decree of 9 February 1976 so as to comply with the Commission's requirements, and in addition, before the decree is amended, of publishing a circular designed to fill provisionally the gaps in its legislation. However, the legislative provisions which the Belgian Government intends to adopt are, in view of their timing, irrelevant to these proceedings. The obligations resulting from Article 14 (1) of Council Directive No 78/319 will not be fully and correctly transposed into national law until the Royal Decree of 9 February 1976 has been amended. Until then the view must be taken that the Kingdom of Belgium has failed — albeit on a relatively specific point — to fulfil certain obligations under the directive in question and, consequently, under the EEC Treaty. With regard to the circular which Belgium intends to issue, there can be no doubt, as the Commission points out in its reply, that since the directive in question imposes obligations on nationals of the Member States, its transposition into national law involves the adoption by those States of legislative provisions which alone are capable of endowing those obligations with the necessary force of law. Consequently, the provisional adoption of a mere administrative measure, or one which is of purely internal scope, is insufficient to ensure the complete transposition of the objectives of the directive into Belgian national law.