Directive (European Union)
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A directive is a legislative act of the European Union which requires member states to achieve a particular result without dictating the means of achieving that result. It can be distinguished from European Union regulations which are self-executing and do not require any implementing measures. Directives normally leave member states with a certain amount of leeway as to the exact rules to be adopted. Directives can be adopted by means of a variety of legislative procedures depending on its subject matter.
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[edit] Legal basis
The legal basis for the enactment of directives is article 249 of the Treaty establishing the European Community and, as such, directives only apply within the European Community pillar of the European Union.
[edit] Legal effect
Directives are only binding on the member states to whom they are addressed, which can be just one member state or a group of them. In practice however, with the exception of directives related to the Common Agricultural Policy, directives are addressed to all member states.
[edit] Implementation
When adopted, directives give member states a timetable for the implementation of the intended outcome. Occasionally the laws of a member state may already comply with this outcome and the state involved would only be required to keep their laws in place. But more commonly member states are required to make changes to their laws — commonly referred to as transposition — in order for the directive to be implemented correctly. If a member state fails to pass the required national legislation, or if the national legislation does not adequately comply with the requirements of the directive, the European Commission may initiate legal action against the member state in the European Court of Justice. This may also happen when a member state has transposed a directive in theory but has failed to abide by its provisions in practice. On 1 May 2008 1,298 such cases open before the Court.[1]
However, the European Commission sometimes inexplicably takes no action, as in the case of the Spanish transposition (Real Decreto-Ley 11/1995) of the Urban Waste Water Directive 91/271/EEC. In the Spanish transposition the definition of a collecting system was changed, adding an addition twelve words and as a consequence the municipal sewer and drainage networks were excluded from the Spanish transposition. Consequently, there is only a need to provide a collecting system going from the municipal network to the treatment plant and if there is no municipal network there is no need to provide any collecting system at all. In addition, Spain did not bring into force the regulations and administrative provisions required by Article 19 of the Directive, which were both compulsory and necessary to define responsibilities, procedures and the method of finance. Hundreds of thousands of EU citizens, mainly residents of urbanizations (housing estates) developed in the 1960s and 1970s, have been prejudiced by this incorrect transposition. The Commission, without explaining why, has refused to recognise that the transposition is incorrect, only stating to the Committee on Petitions on April 30th 2009 that "the Commission considers that the formal transposition is correct." As a result, there are countless urbanisations in Spain within agglomerations of over 2000 people still without sewers in 2009. Members of the Committee on Petitions urged the Commission to consider in more detail this question.
[edit] Direct effect
Notwithstanding the fact that directives were not originally thought to be binding before they were implemented by member states, the European Court of Justice developed the doctrine of direct effect where unimplemented or badly implemented directives can actually have direct legal force. And in Francovich v. Italy the court found that member states could be liable to pay damages to individuals and companies who had been adversely affected by the non-implementation of a directive.
[edit] See also
[edit] External links
- UK House of Commons: Report of the EU Legislative Process and scrutiny by national parliaments.
- EUR-Lex, European Union Law database.
- EU Legislative Procedures
[edit] References
- ^ "Internal Market Scoreboard: best result ever - Member States reach new target ahead of deadline". Europa (web portal). 9 July 2008. http://europa.eu/rapid/pressReleasesAction.do?reference=IP/08/1122&format=HTML&aged=0&language=EN&guiLanguage=en. Retrieved on 18 January 2009.
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