Pollution Prevention and Control: Commission decides to pursue infringement procedures against United Kingdom, Greece, Spain, Finland, Luxembourg, Germany and Belgium

Brussels, 19 January 2001
The European Commission has decided to refer the United Kingdom, Greece, Spain and Finland to the European Court of Justice for not implementing Directive on Integrated Pollution Prevention and Control (IPPC). It has also decided to request Luxembourg, Germany and Belgium to notify measures to implement the IPPC Directive within two months. Should the Member States concerned not respond to the requests, which takes the form of a Reasoned Opinion (second stage of infringement procedures under Article 226 of the EC Treaty), the Commission may decide to refer these Member States to the Court.

Commenting on the decisions Environment Commissioner Margot Wallström said: "The IPPC Directive is a significant advance in environmental regulation of polluting industrial activities. I urge Member States who are late with their national laws to make every effort to complete the necessary legislative work as soon as possible."

The IPPC Directive (Council Directive 96/61/EC concerning integrated pollution prevention and control) is one of the Community's major pieces of recent environmental legislation. The Directive applies to a significant number of potentially polluting industrial activities, covering, for example, energy industries, production and processing of metals, mineral and chemical industries, waste management facilities and certain agri-food facilities. It seeks to prevent or reduce pollution of the air, water and land through a comprehensive permitting system that looks at all of these environmental media together. In addition, it covers the generation of waste, and the use of energy in these industries. This approach stands in contrast to the approach of older environmental legislation that attempted to regulate single environmental media in isolation.

The deadline for adopting and sending to the Commission the necessary national legislation to give effect to the Directive was 30 October 1999. The United Kingdom has sent adopted legislation for England, Wales and Scotland and a draft text for Gibraltar, but the Commission is still waiting to receive adopted measures for Northern Ireland and Gibraltar. Finland has sent measures for the Finnish mainland but not for the province of Åland. The Commission has received no measures from Greece. The measures notified by Luxembourg comprise partial transposing measures as well as draft legislation not yet adopted. Germany and Spain too have sent draft measures but their adoption is not foreseen before later in 2001. In the case of Belgium, adopted measures are missing for Wallonia.

The decisions in these cases are an example of the Commission's standard practice of pursuing concerted legal action where Member States have failed to implement a Directive before the deadline agreed by the Council of Ministers.