Opinion of Mr Advocate General Tesauro delivered on 23 February 1994. # Commission of the European Communities v Kingdom of Belgium. # Failure to fulfil obligations - Failure to transpose a directive. # Case C-260/93.

Opinion of the Advocate-General

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Mr President,

Members of the Court,

1. By application lodged at the Court Registry on 17 April 1993, the Commission of the European Communities seeks a declaration by the Court that, by failing to adopt within the prescribed periods the measures necessary to comply with Council Directive 86/278/EEC of 12 June 1986 on the protection of the environment, and in particular of the soil, when sewage sludge is used in agriculture, (1) the Kingdom of Belgium has failed to fulfil its obligations under the EEC Treaty.

2. In that connection, it is sufficient to point out that the Belgian Government does not dispute the infringement with which it is charged. It confines itself to justifying its delay in transposing the directive on the grounds of the federal reform of the State, as a consequence of which responsibility for the matters regulated by the directive is now divided between the central and regional authorities, which has made it necessary to adopt the measures required by the Community legislation at both federal and local level. The Court has consistently held 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 obligations and time-limits resulting from Community directives. (2)

3. Finally, the essence of the problem is not significantly altered by the partial fulfilment by Belgium of its obligations through the transmission, in the course of these proceedings, of the measures for compliance with the directive which have been adopted by two Regions.

4. I therefore propose that the Court should allow the application and order the defendant State to pay the costs.

(*) Original language: Italian.

(1) - OJ 1986 L 181, p. 6.

(2) - See, most recently, the judgment in Case C-303/92 Commission v Netherlands [1993] ECR I-4739.