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The United Kingdom authorities have found themselves in trouble with the European Commission over a series of failures to implement European environmental legislation. Now the patience of the EU has been exhausted and referrals have been made to the European Court of Justice. We examine below the legal process and the individual problems including the sensitive Sellafield nuclear site.
It is a long and involved legal process that eventually leads to the EU Commission taking a Member State to court. The Commission first needs to detect an infringement of a directive, then it addresses a 'Letter of Formal Notice' to the government concerned. They have 2 months to reply but if Brussels is not satisfied, or there is no reply, the next stage is a 'Reasoned Opinion'. This sets out exactly what is wrong with the country's implementation of EU law. If, after another 2 months, the law has not been complied with, the matter can go to the European Court of Justice (ECJ). It is therefore concerning that the UK government has reached the end of this long and winding road on several environmental issues. These involve nuclear safety at Sellafield, trade in endangered animals and plants and the exclusion of Crown land from environmental safeguards. On all three the British government will shortly find itself in court.
Perhaps the most disturbing is the case of spent nuclear fuel held in a pond at Sellafield which can not be inspected due to poor visibility and high levels of radiation. Charged with checking the site under the Euratom treaty the Commission has been unable to agree a practicable plan with the UK authorities. British legislation which implements the Habitats and Wild Birds directives excludes game birds and those species whose natural range does not cover the UK. This allows trade in several of the nearly 1,000 species banned by the directive. As no amendments are in the pipeline after two warnings this one is heading for the ECJ as well.
The Environmental Impact Assessment (EIA) directive seeks to consult the public when large new development projects are planned and to minimise the effect on the environment. However Crown lands are excluded from the UK legislation which implements the EIA and this makes it harder for people to get involved. The Commission regards the promise of closing the loophole by late 2005 as inadequate.
A German teacher has won a case concerning overtime pay for part time workers. A Ms. Elsner-Lakeberg worked as a part time secondary school teacher for the regional authority. In December 1999 she was asked to work an extra 21/2 hours which she did. She was then told that 3 hours per month was the minimum level to trigger extra wages and the overtime would be unpaid. Ms. Elsner argued that because the limit applied to both full and part time staff she had to work proportionately more extra hours to receive payment than her full time colleagues. Also if more women worked part time than full time the practice could also breach the equal pay directive.
The EU directive on European Works Councils states that any company having more than 1,000 employees in the Member States and more than 150 in at least 2 of them must set one up if requested by the workers. But what do unions do if the head office of a firm is outside the EU and won't give out this information ? Kühne and Nagel, a Swiss company, employ 4,500 people in Germany but would not divulge how many workers they had elsewhere. German management referred the matter to Swiss bosses who said that the EU law did not apply to them. The court ruled that as the German subsidiary had the greatest number of known employees in an EU state, it must provide details of the numbers and distribution of employees of the group throughout the EU.
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