European Commission v United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland.
Date: 2017-05-04
It must be recalled that although in proceedings brought under Article 258 TFEU for failure to fulfil obligations it is for the Commission to prove the allegation that an obligation has not been fulfilled, by placing before the Court all the information required to enable it to establish that the obligation has not been fulfilled, without the Commission being entitled to rely on any presumption, account should be taken of the fact that, where it is a question of checking that the national provisions intended to ensure effective implementation of a directive are applied correctly in practice, the Commission, which does not have investigative powers of its own in this area, is largely reliant on the information provided by complainants or by the Member State concerned (judgment of 2 December 2010, Commission v Portugal, C‑526/09, not published, EU:C:2010:734, paragraph 21 and the case-law cited).
It follows, inter alia, that, where the Commission has adduced sufficient evidence to establish that the national provisions transposing a directive are not applied correctly in practice in the territory of the defendant Member State, it is for the latter to challenge in substance and in detail the information produced and the inferences drawn (judgment of 2 December 2010, Commission v Portugal, C‑526/09, not published, EU:C:2010:734, paragraph 22 and the case-law cited).
In addition, it is for the Court to determine whether or not the alleged breach of obligations exists, even if the State concerned does not deny the breach (see, in particular, judgment of 23 February 2006, Commission v Germany, C‑43/05, not published, EU:C:2006:145, paragraph 11).
Since the alleged infringement must be examined as at 11 September 2014, it must be found that the Gowerton and Llanelli collecting systems could not be considered installations complying with the concept of ‘best technical knowledge not entailing excessive costs’, within the meaning of Section A of Annex I to Directive 91/271. The fact that the United Kingdom embarked upon a large programme of works proves that there were technological solutions in order to overcome the problem of excessive spills before treatment, into waters having numerous interests, of waste waters from the Gowerton and Llanelli agglomerations, but that they had not been applied. In addition, the costs of those works cannot be regarded as excessive given that the United Kingdom has taken the decision to implement them (see, by analogy, judgment of 18 October 2012, Commission v United Kingdom, C‑301/10, EU:C:2012:633, paragraph 90).
Since, on the expiry of the period specified in the reasoned opinion, the Gowerton and Llanelli agglomerations did not have collection systems allowing all the urban waste waters to be retained and conducted for treatment, the obligation to subject all those waters to secondary or equivalent treatment, as provided for in Articles 4 and 10 of Directive 91/271, was not, therefore, a fortiori complied with (see, by analogy, judgment of 25 October 2007, Commission v Greece, C‑440/06, not published, EU:C:2007:642, paragraph 25).
It must be noted that the EU legislature, conscious of the scope of the infrastructure work required for the application of Directive 91/271 and the costs of its full implementation, granted the Member States a period of several years to carry out their obligations. In any event, according to the settled case-law of the Court, a Member State cannot plead difficulties in its domestic legal order to justify a failure to observe obligations arising under EU law (judgment of 6 November 2014, Commission v Belgium, C‑395/13, EU:C:2014:2347, paragraph 51).