Commission of the European Communities v Federal Republic of Germany.
Date: 1995-05-10
16 It is not necessary for the Commission to have a specific interest in bringing an action in order to commence proceedings under Article 169 of the Treaty. Article 169 is not intended to protect the Commission' s own rights but provides one of the means by which the Commission ensures that the Member States give effect to the provisions of the Treaty and the provisions adopted under the Treaty by the institutions. In any event, the fact that the amending directive could not be transposed into national law so long as the Commission had not drawn up the list constituting a precondition for such transposition has no bearing on the admissibility of the action, which is concerned with failure to fulfil obligations imposed by the initial provisions of Directive 75/442 as then in force.
18 However, it is settled law that the rules of Article 169 of the Treaty must be applied and the Commission is not obliged to act within a specified period (see in particular the judgment in Case C-96/89 Commission v Netherlands [1991] ECR I-2461, paragraph 15). The Commission is thus entitled to decide, in its discretion, on what date it may be appropriate to bring an action and it is not for the Court to review the exercise of that discretion. The objection of inadmissibility must therefore be rejected.
Substance
22 As the Court had held, the concept of waste within the meaning of Article 1 of Directives 75/442 and 78/319 is not to be understood as excluding substances and objects which are capable of economic reutilization. National legislation which defines waste as excluding substances and objects which are capable of economic reutilization is not therefore compatible with those directives (see the judgment in Case C-359/88 Zanetti and Others [1990] ECR I-1509, paragraphs 12 and 13).
23 That finding is not affected either by the amendments made to the first of those two directives by Directive 91/156, the final date for the transposition of which falls after the date on which this action was commenced, or by the repeal of the second by Directive 91/689, which made that repeal effective from a date falling after the date of commencement of this action.
32 In that connection, it must be borne in mind that Directive 84/631 introduced a complete system covering, in particular, transfrontier shipments of dangerous waste with a view to their disposal at establishments conforming to specific requirements and is based on the obligation of the holder of the waste to make a detailed notification in advance. The relevant national authorities are entitled to raise objections and are therefore able to prohibit a particular shipment of dangerous waste (as opposed to shipments of dangerous waste in general) in order to deal with the problems concerning, first, protection of the environment and of health and, secondly, public policy and security. Thus, that system does not leave the way open for the Member States to impose a general prohibition on such shipments (see the judgment in Case C-2/90 Commission v Belgium [1992] ECR I-4421, paragraph 20).
33 Contrary to what the Commission' s apparently thinks, as evidenced by its reference to the judgment in Commission v Belgium, cited above, the German legislation is not comparable to the rules of the Walloon Region, which, in paragraph 21 of that judgment, the Court found not to be in conformity with Directive 84/631 in so far as they disapplied the procedure provided for by that directive and imposed an absolute prohibition on the import of dangerous waste into Wallonia. Although Paragraph 2 of the AbfG lays down the principle that waste produced in German territory must be disposed of there, that principle applies only "unless otherwise provided by Paragraph 13". Paragraph 13 lays down the conditions under which transfrontier shipments of waste are permitted and must be read in conjunction with Paragraph 13c, the specific object of which is to enable the provisions of Directive 84/631 to be transposed, by means of regulations.