European Court of Justice orders Bulgaria to pay EC 1.6M euro to EC for failure to comply with directive
The European Court of Justice (ECJ) has ordered Bulgaria to pay the European Commission (EC) a sum of 1.59 million euro as well as its own court costs as well as those of the EC for failure to transpose a 2019 directive on clean and energy-efficient road transport vehicles.
EU countries had until August 2 2021 to bring into force the laws, regulations and administrative provisions necessary to comply with the directive, and were required to immediately inform the EC that they had done so.
On September 29 2021, the EC sent Bulgaria a letter of formal notice in which it reminded that Member State that the deadline prescribed for transposing the directive had expired.
The EC said at the time that if Bulgarian legislation already complied with the directive, it had to communicate the text of the corresponding national provisions as well as to indicate the transposition measures with sufficient clarity and precision.
Bulgaria replied on November 29 2021 that it would be transposed in full through legislative amendments.
However, in the absence of any subsequent communication, the EC sent Bulgaria a reasoned opinion on April 6 2022 requesting it to take, within two months of receipt, the measures necessary.
Bulgaria wrote back on May 30 2022 that it did not dispute the alleged infringement, and said that the directive would be transposed in full.
Taking the view that, more than 20 months after the expiry of the deadline for the transposition of that directive, the measures ensuring its transposition in full had still not been adopted or, at the very least, notified to the Commission, the Commission took Bulgaria to the ECJ.
In its defence, Bulgaria submitted that the delay in transposing Directive 2019/1161 was due to political instability in Bulgaria, caused by frequent changes of government and by the dissolution of the National Assembly.
Bulgaria said that the law transposing the directive had been adopted on October 5 2023 and published in the State Gazette on October 20 2023. It asked for the case to be discontinued.
It said that some of the definitions provided for in the directive had existed in national legislation before August 2 2021. It also cited difficulties caused by the Covid-19 pandemic.
The EC responded that Bulgaria had not demonstrated a specific link between the Covid-19 pandemic and the delay in transposing the directive.
The Commission said that the period for transposing the directive had begun to run seven months before Bulgaria declared a State of Emergency in March 2020 because of the Covid-19 pandemic. As is apparent from the defence, the preparatory work for the draft law transposing that directive did not begin until 2021.
The EC said that all EU member states, with the exception of Bulgaria and Estonia, had transposed the directive before the end of 2022, and Estonia had completed the transposition in April 2023.
The Commission cited four items of ECJ case law finding that an EU country may not plead provisions, practices or situations prevailing in the domestic legal order to justify its failure to transpose a directive by the deadline.
It said that in any event, the parliamentary crisis to which Bulgaria referred began in April 2021, four months before the expiry of the deadline for transposing the directive.
The ECJ, in its judgement published on March 20, upheld the EC’s arguments to find against Bulgaria.
(Photo: European Public Prosecutors Office)
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