Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2004-02-12-Speech-4-109"
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"en.20040212.6.4-109"2
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"Mr President, I have known Mr Perry for some time in this Parliament – and I consider him one of my best friends – and I have followed the issue he raised in the Committee on Legal Affairs and the Internal Market with very real interest.
But having examined the case, I have no choice but to agree with what Mr Patten just said. That is to say, in the infringement procedure, the Commission is not the Court of Justice, but an agent of Community law which tries to ensure that the law is applied, by demanding that the State comply with Community legislation. And in this case, I believe that the Commission has done that, although perhaps rather belatedly.
The result of an infringement procedure, once the State in question has complied with Community law, is the closure of the case, because – as Mr Patten has also said – there is a repeated judgment of the Court of Justice of the European Communities according to which there is no case for infringement when the State in question has complied with Community law.
I believe that Mr Perry has a laudable interest in the Community institutions functioning properly and, of course, it would be desirable for us all to do the same with all the directives that are not transposed by the Member States. What does not work here is a mechanism of fines and penalties imposed by the Commission. The Commission does not have those powers. Only the Court of Justice should have them and, specifically, I would refer Mr Perry to British law. Continental administrative law allows a State to be called to account for non-compliance with its obligations, including, for example, the failure to transpose a Community directive in time. But I have the impression that the procedure which is being tried here is not going to lead anywhere, because I do not see how the Commission, at any point, is going to be able to invoke non-compliance with a Community directive in the past on the part of the State in order to call them to account. From a legal point of view, that mechanism does not exist.
In other words, given that Mr Perry is probably completely right to be concerned about compliance with Community legislation and acknowledging that there has probably been harm done to individuals, the judicial procedure is not that of reiteration of the action by the Commission – which has fulfilled its obligations – but, if necessary, an internal British administrative procedure in the event that, in accordance with British law, individuals have been prejudiced by the failure to transpose a Community directive in time.
I therefore believe that the Commission, at this time, has fully complied with its obligations and we in the European Parliament cannot demand that it act in any other way."@en1
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