The European Commission (EC) has announced that it will be referring Spain to the EU Court of Justice (CJEU) for failing to ‘close, seal and ecologically restore 61 illegal landfills’ as stipulated under the EU’s Waste Framework Directive (WFD), which sets the legal basis for waste treatment in the EU.

The WFD includes the ‘polluter pays principal’ (PPP) which operates on the assumption that pollution will be reduced if the polluter is forced to pay the costs of clean-up, thereby negating the economic incentive to pollute.

To ensure compliance with the directive, EU member states must ‘recover and dispose of waste in a manner that does not endanger human health and the environment, prohibiting the abandonment, dumping or uncontrolled disposal of waste’.

According to the EC, Spain has ignored repeated warnings issued in response to poor waste management in the regions of Andalusia, the Balearic Islands, the Canary Islands, Castile-La Mancha, Castile and León, and Murcia.

Having identified these sites, the EC opened infringement proceedings over Spain’s illegal landfill sites in March 2007, with a ‘reasoned opinion’, warning that legal action is imminent, following in October 2008. The Spanish authorities consequently promised to close and restore the illegal landfills before the end of 2011.

However, progress has been slow, prompting the EC to send an additional reasoned opinion in September 2014, urging Spain to adequately address 63 uncontrolled sites, which although not currently in operation, were still deemed to pose a ‘threat to human health and the environment’.

After an assessment in mid-2015, it was discovered that the ‘necessary work for the closure, sealing and regeneration of 61 uncontrolled landfill sites has not yet been planned, approved or initiated’.

By referring Spain to the CJEU, the EC hopes that it can ‘speed up the process’.

European Commission infringement procedure

According to EC procedures, if the CJEU rules against a member state it ‘must then take the necessary measures to comply with the judgement’.

Should the member state still fail to act, the EC may open another infringement case, requiring only one written warning before referring the case back to the court.

The court can then impose financial penalties on the member state concerned ‘based on the duration and severity of the infringement and the size of the member state’.

Financial penalties take the form of a lump sum depending on the time elapsed since the original court ruling and a daily penalty payment for each day after a second court ruling until the infringement ends.

Find out more about EU infringement procedures.