An EU directive seeks to protect the environment from the adverse effects caused by the discharge of urban waste water (domestic water and industrial waste water). This directive provides, among other things, that the Member States had to ensure that all agglomerations with a ‘population equivalent’ 2 of over 15,000 were equipped with collecting systems for urban waste water by December 31, 2000 at the latest. Furthermore, these agglomerations were required to treat urban waste water prior to discharge. As it took the view that 24 Greek agglomerations with a population equivalent of over 15,000 were equipped with neither collecting systems for urban waste water nor treatment systems, the Commission in 2006 brought an action before the Court of Justice against Greece for failure to fulfil obligations.

By a judgment of October 25, 2007, the Court found that Greece had failed to fulfil its obligations on the ground that 23 agglomerations were still not equipped with systems for collecting and/or treating urban waste water. Finding that Greece had still not complied with the 2007 judgment in six of the 23 agglomerations concerned (namely, the agglomerations of Lefkimmi, Markopoulo, Koropi, Nea Makri, Rafina and Artemida) the Commission decided in 2014 to bring a further action against Greece for failure to fulfil its obligations. In this context the Commission requests that the Court order Greece to pay to it a periodic fine of €47,462.40 for each day of delay in complying with the 2007 judgment and a fixed sum of €5,191.20 per day from the date of the 2007 judgment to that of full compliance with it.

The ECJ finds that Greece has failed in its obligation to comply with the 2007 judgment in so far as, by the expiry of the period fixed by the Commission for compliance with that judgment (April 25, 2011), the six agglomerations concerned had still not been equipped with systems for collecting or treating urban waste water. In order to ensure full compliance with the 2007 judgment, the Court has decided to impose on Greece pecuniary sanctions in the form of a periodic fine and a fixed sum payment. With regard to the periodic fine, the Court takes the view that the absence or insufficiency of systems for collecting or treating urban waste water is likely to have an adverse effect on the environment and is thus to be regarded as particularly severe. However, the Court notes as a mitigating factor that, given the relatively small number of agglomerations that have still not been brought into compliance, the damage to the environment is less significant than what was found to be the case in 2007.

Finally, the Court takes into consideration the reduced payment capacity of Greece, the gross domestic product of which has fallen since 2007. For all of these reasons the Court considers it appropriate to impose on Greece, as from Thursday, a sliding-scale periodic fine of €20,000 per day, corresponding to €3.64 million per semester of delay, the actual amount of the fine to be calculated every six months, taking account each time of the number of population-equivalent agglomerations which have been brought into compliance with the 2007 judgment. As for the fixed sum, which is designed to ensure that future repetition of similar infringements of EU law is effectively prevented, the Court considers it appropriate, for substantially the same reasons as those which led to the imposition of the periodic fine, to require Greece to pay a sum of €10 million.