Umweltanwalt von Kärnten v Kärntner Landesregierung.
Date: 2009-12-10
35. According to settled case-law, in order to determine whether the body making a reference is a court or tribunal for the purposes of Article 234 EC, which is a question governed by Community law alone, the Court takes account of a number of factors, such as whether the body is established by law, whether it is permanent, whether its jurisdiction is compulsory, whether its procedure is inter parties, whether it applies rules of law and whether it is independent (Case 61/65 Vaasen-Göbbels  [1966] ECR 261 at 273, and Case C‑195/06 Österreichischer Rundfunk  [2007] ECR I‑8817, paragraph 19 and the case-law cited).
41. In this respect, it must be recalled that, according to the settled case-law of the Court, it is solely for the national court before which the dispute has been brought, and which must assume responsibility for the subsequent judicial decision, to determine in the light of the particular circumstances of the case both the need for a preliminary ruling in order to enable it to deliver judgment and the relevance of the questions which it submits to the Court (Case C‑545/07 Apis-Hristovich  [2009] ECR I‑0000, paragraph 28 and the case-law cited).
42. Consequently, where the questions submitted concern the interpretation of Community law, the Court is in principle bound to give a ruling ( Apis-Hristovich , paragraph 29 and the case-law cited).
48. It must be borne in mind that, according to settled case-law, the terms used in a provision of Community law which makes no express reference to the law of the Member States for the purpose of determining its meaning and scope must be given throughout the Community an autonomous and uniform interpretation, which must take into account the context of the provision and the purpose of the legislation in question (Case C-287/98 Linster  [2000] ECR I‑6917, paragraph 43, and Case C‑290/03 Barker  [2006] ECR I‑3949, paragraph 40).
50. The Court has already held, in regard to the obligation to assess effects on the environment, that the wording of Directive 85/337 indicates that its scope is wide and its purpose very broad (Case C‑72/95 Kraaijeveld and Others  [1996] ECR I‑5403, paragraphs 31 and 39).
51. It must also be pointed out that Directive 85/337 adopts an overall assessment of the effects of projects on the environment (Case C‑142/07 Ecologistas en Acción-CODA  [2008] ECR I‑6097, paragraph 39 and the case-law cited) irrespective of whether the project might be transboundary in nature.
52. In addition, the Member States must implement Directive 85/337 in a manner which fully corresponds to its requirements, having regard to its fundamental objective which, as is clear from Article 2(1), is that, before consent is given, projects likely to have significant effects on the environment by virtue, inter alia, of their nature, size or location should be the subject of an assessment with regard to their effects (see, to that effect, Ecologistas en Acción-CODA , paragraph 33).
53. Moreover, the Court has held that the purpose of Directive 85/337 cannot be circumvented by the splitting of projects and that the failure to take account of the cumulative effect of several projects must not mean in practice that they all cease to be covered by the obligation to carry out an assessment, when, taken together, they are likely to have ‘significant effects on the environment’ within the meaning of Article 2(1) of Directive 85/337 (see, to that effect, Ecologistas en Acción-CODA , paragraph 44).
55. Such an exemption would seriously interfere with the objective of Directive 85/337. Its effectiveness would be seriously compromised if the competent authorities of a Member State could, when deciding whether a project must be the subject of an environmental impact assessment, leave out of consideration that part of the project which is located in another Member State (see, by analogy, Case C‑227/01 Commission  v Spain  [2004] ECR I‑8253, paragraph 53).