EU Law Enforcement by the Court of Justice

Extract

[...] In this case, the sanction is a means of making the appeal more effective. -Innovation introduced by the Treaty of Lisbon, the Court can impose a fine and/or a penalty payment from the first judgment establishing a failure to transpose the obligation within the limit of the amount claimed by the Commission (Article 260§3 TFUE). Which it did for the first time in the judgment C-543-71 of 8 July 2019, European Commission v Kingdom of Belgium. -The Court's intransigence even explains why it has accepted the principle of cumulating the two economic sanctions in the case of the 'under-sized fish' (2005), making France pay a sum of just under 60 million euros for not having executed the first judgment dated 1991. [...]

[...] It encompasses all the hypotheses where the States have not applied the law of the Union or have poorly applied it. We can even say that it constitutes a means of execution of the obligations of the States that are bound by a principle of loyalty. Designated as the guardian of the treaties in the community interest (Article 17 TEU), the Commission plays a significant role in the procedure. It has, in fact, a sovereign power of appreciation and an opportunity to be seized constantly recalled by the Court itself (for example: CJCE Sept C-416/07, Comm. [...]

[...] France) or an external agreement. Examples of breaches: a failure to implement a regulation (CJUE Feb C-139/13, Comm. v. Belgium) ; a failure to transpose a directive, or even a partial transposition (CJUE July 2010, C-35/10, Comm. v. France) ; the non-execution of a Commission decision (CJUE July 2013, C-520/11, Comm. v. France). -On the nature of the incriminated behavior, the interpretation is also broad. [...]

[...] -Notably, to counter the phenomenon of fait accompli, a major obstacle to the effective execution of the Court's judgments, it has consolidated its prerogatives in the contentious urgency of the action in infringement by assuming a direct injunctive power. It thus determines the obligations to do or not to do of the Member States, intervening in their legal order. In practice, the Court has boldly given itself the authority to set aside national measures violating EU law (Order rendered [...]

[...] The CJEU's voluntarism now allows the principles inherent to the rule of law to be made opposable to States. However, this ambitious evolution has also been accompanied by a strengthening of its powers by the Court in the effectiveness of its judgments, since it is a component of the right to judicial protection which has the value of a general principle of EU law. II. An increasingly effective appeal The enforcement process of the Court's judgments has also undergone depoliticization (Elisabeth Lambert Abdelgawad). [...]