EN Official Journal of the European Union CE 84/178

(2004/C 84 E/0218)

WRITTEN QUESTION E-0238/04

by Joachim Wuermeling (PPE-DE) to the Commission

(2 February 2004)

Subject: Implementation of the directive on the safety of cableways

The European Union has recently adopted a directive on the safety of cableways. The Member States are in the process of transposing it into national law.

In Germany, the rules on cableway requirements are the responsibility of the Länder. The German Länder include city-states such as Hamburg, Bremen and Berlin and flat, coastal Länder like Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania and Schleswig-Holstein.

Is it true, as reported in the press, that the Commission intends to oblige even the above Länder to transpose the directive into a law on cableways or face a penalty, even though, for topographical reasons, cable cars can never be installed there?

Answer given by Mr Liikanen on behalf of the Commission

(3 March 2004)

Article 21 of Directive 2000/9/EC of the European Parliament and of the Council of 20 March 2000 relating to cableway installations designed to carry persons (1) specifies that Member States should have adopted and published the laws, regulations and administrative provisions necessary to comply with this Directive by 3 May 2002.

Germany has thus been under an obligation to take the necessary measures to transpose the Directive into national law within the required time. According to the information available to the Commission, this has not yet been done in full; only the Länder of Baden-Wurttemberg, Bavaria, Brandenburg, North Rhine-Westphalia, Saarland, Saxony-Anhalt and Thuringia have adopted the above provisions.

Consequently, in accordance with Article 226 of the EC Treaty, after first giving Germany the opportunity to comment (in a letter dated 16 September 2002) and then issuing a reasoned opinion (on 19 December 2002), on 16 October 2003 the Commission referred the matter to the Court of Justice on the grounds that that Germany had failed to fulfil its obligations under the Directive by not adopting the necessary provisions to transpose it into national law.

It should be pointed out that this Directive does not cover the actual operation of cableway installations. It defines the essential safety requirements applying to the design, construction and putting into service of the installations. The Directive is based on Article 95 of the EC Treaty and is also intended to eliminate obstacles to the free movement of safety subsystems and components of cableway installations placed on the internal market from 3 May 2004 by manufacturers established anywhere in the Community, including those regions in which there are no cableway installations.

Furthermore, according to the case law of the Court, the fact that an activity referred to in a directive does not exist in a particular Member State cannot release that State from its obligation to transpose the directive within the time limit (2).

Finally, the construction of cableway installations cannot automatically be ruled out in any of the Länder, since this type of installation can be used not only in high-altitude tourist resorts but may also consist of cableway installations used in urban transport facilities, as mentioned in the first recital of the Directive.

(1) OJ L 106, 3.5.2000.

(2) See the judgments of 15.03.1990, case C-339/87, Commission v. Netherlands, ECR 1990, p. I-851, point 22, and 16.11.2000, case C-214/98, Commission v. Greece, ECR 2000, p. I-9601, point 22.