1 By application lodged at the Court Registry on 10 November 1998, the Commission of the European Communities brought an action under Article 169 of the EC Treaty (now Article 226 EC) in which it sought a declaration that, by failing to adopt the laws, regulations and administrative provisions necessary to comply with Directive 94/47/EC of the European Parliament and the Council of 26 October 1994 on the protection of purchasers in respect of certain aspects of contracts relating to the purchase of the right to use immovable properties on a timeshare basis (OJ 1994 L 280, p. 83, hereinafter `the Directive'), the Hellenic Republic has failed to fulfil its obligations under that directive.
2 Under Article 12(1) of the Directive, Member States were required to bring into force the laws, regulations and administrative provisions necessary to comply with the Directive by no later than 30 months after its publication in the Official Journal of the European Communities, and immediately to inform the Commission thereof.
3 Given that the Directive was published on 29 October 1994, Member States were required to adopt the measures necessary to implement it before 30 April 1997.
4 Having received from the Greek Government no notification concerning the measures taken to transpose the Directive into Greek law, and in the absence of any other information from which it could conclude that the Hellenic Republic had fulfilled its obligation to do so, the Commission gave formal notice to that State by letter of 9 September 1997, in accordance with the procedure laid down in Article 169 of the Treaty, calling on it to submit its observations within a period of two months.
5 The Greek Government replied by letter of 11 November 1997, saying that a proposal for transposing the Directive had been drawn up in the form of a ministerial decree and had been sent to the Greek Tourist Board for comment.
6 In view of the fact that, by 16 January 1998, the Greek authorities had still not sent a copy of the decree, the Commission sent a reasoned opinion to the Hellenic Republic, requesting it to adopt the necessary measures to fulfil its obligations under the Directive within two months of notification of the opinion.
7 Having received no further information regarding the transposition of the Directive, the Commission decided to bring the present action.
8 In its defence, the Greek Government does not deny that the measures necessary to transpose the Directive were not taken within the prescribed period. It states, however, that the Ministry for Development has prepared a draft presidential decree to which all the necessary signatures ought to be affixed shortly and which will then be sent to the Council of State for assessment, and that it is endeavouring to complete the procedure to bring its national law into line with the Directive as quickly as possible.
9 As the Commission has pointed out, it is settled case-law that a Member State may not plead provisions, practices or circumstances existing in its internal legal system in order to justify a failure to comply with the obligations and time-limits laid down in a directive (see, in particular, Case C-214/96 Commission v Spain [1998] ECR I-7661, paragraph 18).
10 Since the Directive has not been transposed within the period prescribed therein, the action brought by the Commission must be held to be well founded.
11 It must therefore be held that, by failing to adopt, within the prescribed period, the laws, regulations and administrative provisions necessary to comply with the Directive, the Hellenic Republic has failed to fulfil its obligations under the Directive.