Commission of the European Communities v Ireland.
Date: 2005-06-02
38. It must be noted at the outset that, according to the Court’s case-law, the programmes to be established under Article 7 of the Directive must be specific.  The specific nature of the programmes in question lies in the fact that they must embody a comprehensive and coherent approach, providing practical and coordinated arrangements covering the entire national territory for the reduction of pollution caused by any of the substances in List II which is relevant in the particular context of each Member State, in accordance with the quality objectives fixed by those programmes for the waters affected (Case C-207/97 Commission  v Belgium  [1999] ECR I-275, paragraphs 39 and 40).  The concept of ‘programmes’ thus implies a series of coordinated, integrated and comprehensive measures.
40. First, with regard to the 14 substances covered by the 2001 Regulations, the latter came into force after the period set in the supplementary reasoned opinion had elapsed, a fact acknowledged by the Irish authorities in their statement of defence.  The question whether a Member State has failed to fulfil its obligations must be determined by reference to the situation in that Member State as it stood at the end of the period laid down in the reasoned opinion, and the Court cannot take account of any subsequent changes (Case C-289/94 Commission  v Italy  [1996] ECR I‑4405, paragraph 20).  It must for that reason be stated that, when the period granted it expired, Ireland had not established pollution reduction programmes for all of the substances in respect of which it was required to do so.
53. As the Court has already ruled, the fact that a Member State claims that it has set itself more ambitious objectives than those pursued by a given directive does not relieve that Member State of its obligation to comply, at the very least, with the requirements laid down in that directive (see Case C-292/99 Commission  v France  [2002] ECR I-4097, paragraph 48).
68. As a preliminary point, it should be noted that, as the Court has already ruled on numerous occasions, it follows inter alia from Article 7(2) of the Directive that authorisations must contain emission standards which are applicable to authorised individual discharges and which have been calculated in accordance with the quality objectives previously laid down in a programme established pursuant to Article 7(1) to protect the expanses of water and watercourses in question (Joined Cases C-232/95 and C-233/95 Commission  v Greece  [1998] ECR I-3343, paragraph 28).  Because of the absence of a coherent and general system of quality objectives, the other elements of a programme (authorisations and emission standards based on the objectives) cannot be defined in such a way as to comply with the requirements of the Directive.
70. Further, in regard to the failure to make certain local authority discharges, such as drainage discharges and storm water overflows, subject to authorisation, it should be noted that the Urban Waste Water Treatment Regulations 2001 were adopted on 14 June 2001, that is to say, almost one year after the date of the supplementary reasoned opinion sent by the Commission.  The question whether there has been a failure to fulfil obligations must be determined by reference to the situation in the Member State as it stood at the end of the period laid down in the reasoned opinion, and the Court cannot take account of any subsequent changes (see Commission  v Italy , cited above, paragraph 20).  It must be declared that Ireland has failed to fulfil its obligations in this regard.
80. In the first place, the 1977 Act does not contain precise provisions allowing individuals to refer to a clear, precise and unequivocal legal framework, as required by the Court (see, to this effect, Case C-119/92 Commission  v Italy  [1994] ECR I-393, paragraph 17).  By way of example, it should be pointed out that the 1977 Act does not contain an enumeration of the pollutants within the terms of List II of the annex to the Directive, which prevents those concerned from knowing the true scope of that prohibition.