Theresa Emmott v Minister for Social Welfare and Attorney General.
Date: 1991-07-25
16 As the Court has consistently held (see, in particular, the judgments in Case 33/76 Rewe-Zentralfinanz eG and Rewe-Zentral AG v Landwirtschaftskammer fuer das Saarland [1976] ECR 1989 and Case 199/82 Amministrazione delle Finanze dello Stato v San Giorgio SpA [1983] ECR 3595), in the absence of Community rules on the subject, it is for the domestic legal system of each Member State to determine the procedural conditions governing actions at law intended to ensure the protection of the rights which individuals derive from the direct effect of Community law, provided that such conditions are not less favourable than those relating to similar actions of a domestic nature nor framed so as to render virtually impossible the exercise of rights conferred by Community law.
17 Whilst the laying down of reasonable time-limits which, if unobserved, bar proceedings, in principle satisfies the two conditions mentioned above, account must nevertheless be taken of the particular nature of directives.
18 According to the third paragraph of Article 189 of the EEC Treaty, a directive is to be binding, as to the result to be achieved, upon each Member State to which it is addressed, but is to leave to the national authorities the choice of form and methods. Although that provision leaves Member States free to choose the ways and means of ensuring that a directive is implemented, that freedom does not affect the obligation, imposed on all the Member States to which a directive is addressed, to adopt, within the framework of their national legal systems, all the measures necessary to ensure that the directive is fully effective, in accordance with the objective which it pursues (see judgment in Case 14/83 Sabine van Colson and Elisabeth Kamann v Land Nordrhein-Westfalen [1984] ECR 1891).
20 Only in specific circumstances, in particular where a Member State has failed to take the implementing measures required or has adopted measures which are not in conformity with a directive, has the Court recognized the right of persons affected thereby to rely, in judicial proceedings, on a directive as against a defaulting Member State. This minimum guarantee, arising from the binding nature of the obligation imposed on the Member States by the effect of directives, cannot justify a Member State absolving itself from taking in due time implementing measures appropriate to the purpose of each directive (see judgment in Case 102/79 Commission v Belgium [1980] ECR 1473).
21 So long as a directive has not been properly transposed into national law, individuals are unable to ascertain the full extent of their rights. That state of uncertainty for individuals subsists even after the Court has delivered a judgment finding that the Member State in question has not fulfilled its obligations under the directive and even if the Court has held that a particular provision or provisions of the directive are sufficiently precise and unconditional to be relied upon before a national court.
22 Only the proper transposition of the directive will bring that state of uncertainty to an end and it is only upon that transposition that the legal certainty which must exist if individuals are to be required to assert their rights is created.
23 It follows that, until such time as a directive has been properly transposed, a defaulting Member State may not rely on an individual' s delay in initiating proceedings against it in order to protect rights conferred upon him by the provisions of the directive and that a period laid down by national law within which proceedings must be initiated cannot begin to run before that time.