Landfill: Court orders Italy to pay a lump sum payment of €40 million
Italy is ordered to pay financial penalties for failing to comply with a 2007 judgment of the Court establishing failure to fulfil obligations under the waste directives.
In a first judgment delivered in 2007, the Court established that Italy had failed, generally and persistently, to comply with its waste management obligations under the directives on waste, hazardous waste and the landfill of waste.
In 2013, the Commission found that Italy had not yet adopted all the measures necessary to comply with the 2007 judgment. In particular, 218 sites in 18 of the 20 Italian regions were not in conformity with the Waste Directive (from which it could be inferred that there must be sites
operating without a permit); also, of those 218 sites, 16 contained hazardous waste in breach of the Hazardous Waste Directive; and, lastly, Italy had not proved that five landfills had been ‘conditioned’ or closed down in accordance with the Landfill of Waste Directive.
In the course of the present proceedings, the Commission stated that, according to the most recent information, 198 sites were still not in conformity with the ‘Waste Directive’ and that 14 of those sites were not in conformity with the ‘Hazardous Waste Directive’ either. Moreover, two landfills had still not been brought into conformity with the ‘Landfill of Waste Directive’.
In today’s judgment, the Court states, first of all, that merely closing down a landfill, or covering waste with earth and rubble, is not enough to comply with the obligations under the ‘Waste Directive’. Accordingly, compliance with the directive is not achieved by taking measures to close sites down and make them secure. In fact, Member States are also required to determine whether it is necessary to clean up old illegal sites and, if so, to clean them up. Sequestrating the landfill and instituting criminal proceedings against the operator do not constitute sufficient measures.
Next, the Court points out that, on the expiry of the deadline, cleaning up works were still in progress or had not yet been started for certain sites; in respect of other sites, the Court observes that no information had been provided that would make it possible to establish the date on which such works were implemented.
The Court concludes from this that the obligation to recover or dispose of waste without endangering humans or the environment, and the obligation requiring the holder of waste to have it handled by a waste collector which carries out waste disposal and recovery operations, or to carry out those operations itself, have persistently been infringed.
Italy has failed to make sure that the permit system set up is actually applied and observed. It has failed to ensure that operations carried out without a permit are in fact brought to an end. Italy has also failed to record and identify exhaustively all the hazardous waste discharged in the landfills.
Lastly, it continues to default on its obligation to ensure that a conditioning plan or a definitive closing-down measure is adopted for certain landfills.
The Court concludes from this that Italy has failed to adopt all the measures necessary to comply with the 2007 judgment and that it has failed to fulfil its obligations under EU law.
Consequently, the Court orders Italy to pay a lump sum payment of €40 million. Next, the Court points out that the failure to fulfil obligations has persisted for more than seven years and that, since the deadline, progress has been made very slowly; there are still a considerable number of illegal sites in almost every Italian region. The Court therefore considers it appropriate to order a decreasing penalty payment, to be paid in an amount which will be progressively reduced in proportion to the number of sites brought into conformity with the judgment, sites containing hazardous waste being counted twice. Requiring the decreasing penalty payment to be paid on a six monthly basis will enable Italy’s progress in meeting its obligations to be assessed. Evidence of the adoption of measures necessary for compliance with the 2007 judgment must be sent to the Commission before the end of the six month period under consideration.
The Court therefore orders Italy to pay, in addition, a six monthly penalty payment from today until compliance with the 2007 judgment is achieved. The penalty payment will be calculated for the first six month period, on the basis of an initial amount of €42 800 000. From that amount, €400 000 will be deducted for each hazardous waste site brought into conformity and €200 000 for each other site brought into conformity. For every six month period thereafter, the penalty payment will be calculated on the basis of the amount set for the preceding six month period, the same deductions being made for sites brought into conformity during the six month period under consideration.
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