Brussels Launches Another Lawsuit

 

The EU Commission is scolding Emmanuel Macron's government over its failure to make certain extra than a hundred cities and towns properly collect their wastewater. The country should have been complying with EU legal guidelines on wastewater since 2005, more than 10 years before Mr Macron took office.

But the Commission despatched a letter of formal note to the French authorities in October 2017 accompanied by a reasoned opinion in May 2020.

However, France is yet to adhere to the legislation.

The Commission said: “Although the French authorities have shared monitoring data aimed at displaying compliance with the necessities of the Directive for some of the agglomerations initially identified, the deficiencies and gaps remaining therein lead the Commission to conclude that the authorities have failed to show compliance for the above-mentioned agglomerations.”

The Commission discovered 22 towns and cities with a populace of more than 2,000 people in the central-European country in breach of the Directive.

A letter of formal note was dispatched to Hungarian authorities in February 2017, accompanied by a reasoned opinion in December 2017.

The Commission added: “Although the Hungarian authorities have carefully cooperated with the Commission, the low ratio of connections to accumulating structures already constructed and the excessive ratio of individual or suitable structures (IAS) utilization led the Commission to conclude, that the authorities have failed to show compliance for the above-mentioned agglomerations.”

In 2019, the Commission had already referred Cyprus to the Court of Justice for the same reason.

Cyprus, they said, failed to grant a collecting system for a range of agglomerations and has additionally failed to make sure that the city wastewater getting into collecting systems is subject to suitable treatment.