Commission of the European Communities v French Republic.
Date: 2003-06-12
57.  It is appropriate to recall, as a first point, that the Court has already pointed out that the obligations flowing from Article 7 of Directive 76/464 require the Member States   inter alia   to establish programmes which include quality objectives for waters and which require all discharges of substances within List II to have prior authorisation, in which emissions standards are laid down on the basis of those quality objectives (Commission   v   Germany  , cited above, paragraph 28).
58.  The Court has also held that the programmes to be established under Article 7 of Directive 76/464 must be specific and that a pollution reduction objective set out in general purification programmes does not necessarily correspond to the more specific objective of the Directive (Case C-207/97   Commission   v   Belgium   [1999] ECR I-275, paragraph 39, and Case C-384/97   Commission   v   Greece   [2000] ECR I-3823, paragraph 39).
59.  It is also settled case-law that the programmes in question must specifically form a comprehensive and coherent approach, covering the entire national territory and providing practical and coordinated arrangements for the reduction of pollution caused by any of the substances in List II which are relevant in the particular context of each Member State, in accordance with the quality objectives fixed by those programmes for receiving waters (see,   inter alia  ,   Commission   v   Belgium  , paragraph 40, and Case C-384/97   Commission   v   Greece  , paragraph 40, cited above).
60.  Consequently, neither general rules nor   ad hoc   measures adopted by a Member State which, though comprising a wide range of standards aimed at protecting waters, do not lay down quality objectives relating to a given watercourse or body of water can be deemed to constitute a programme within the meaning of Article 7 of Directive 76/464 (Commission   v   Germany  , paragraph 58).
61.  More particularly, as regards the scope of quality objectives, the Court has held that those objectives are intended to reduce pollution and that, since the quality of the aquatic environment is closely linked to its level of polluting substances, those objectives must relate to the presence of polluting substances in receiving waters (Case C-152/98   Commission   v   Netherlands   [2001] ECR I-3463, paragraph 43).
62.  In addition, the Court drew attention to the particular importance which the Community legislature attaches to fixing quality objectives for all the substances referred to in Directive 76/464 (Commission   v   Germany  , paragraph 34).
63.  The Court therefore held, in paragraphs 42 and 43 of   Commission   v   Belgium  , that national measures which do not cover all the substances referred to in the first indent of the first subparagraph of List II cannot be considered to satisfy the requirements of Article 7 of Directive 76/464.
64.  Moreover, with a view to ensuring the practical effect of that article, the Court held, first, that under Directive 76/464 the obligation on Member States to establish programmes and quality objectives for List II substances is conditioned not by a finding of actual water pollution by those substances but by discharges of those substances into the aquatic environment, and secondly, that the fact that a Member State may attain the result sought by the directive by means of an improvement in water quality as a result of some other method does not relieve it of its obligation to adopt the measures provided for in that article (Commission   v   Germany  , paragraphs 41, 42 and 61).
74.  It is settled case-law that it is irrelevant that the failure of a Member State to fulfil its obligations is the result of technical difficulties it encounters (see, in particular, Case C-152/98   Commission   vNetherlands  , cited above, paragraph 41, and Case C-364/00   Commission   vNetherlands   [2002] ECR I-4177, paragraph 10).