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We have previously covered infringements of environmental laws by Member States and the procedure which the EU uses to deal with them. While these go on the Commission hopes that a new law which will make it easier for citizens to uncover environmental information might help to reduce them.
While we detailed in issue 28 the infringements of environmental legislation for which the United Kingdom was being taken to the European Court of Justice, the UK is not alone in falling victim to this procedure. Greece was recently taken to task on three separate counts involving the pollution of a lake near Salonika in northern Greece, and failure to pass laws on ozone alerts and greenhouse gas emissions trading.
For an infringement to reach the stage of referral to the court a long process must be gone through so it is possible that the new laws enabling people to seek redress for failures by their national government could speed things up.
The directive on public access to environmental information, which is now binding on all Member States, grants a right to access, widens the definition of the information to be included, and reduces the time limit for the authorities to respond from two months to one. It also states the possible justifications for refusal which can not happen if the public interest is better served by disclosure. Finally any refusal or omission can be appealed by the citizen.
Environment Commissioner Stavros Dimas commented 'Europe's public now not only has the freedom but also the right to obtain environmental information É. Information can be a powerful catalyst for change towards increased protection of the environment and I hope the public will make the best use of it'. Ironically only nine countries have notified the Commission of national laws to give effect to the directive so infringement proceedings will soon be started against the others.
The Working Time Directive, even in its present, unamended state, does give some protection to workers involved in both opt-out and 'duty time' work rosters according to the ECJ. Seven emergency workers employed by the German Red Cross were required to spend substantial periods on duty time when they must remain at work and be ready to respond to a call. This is different from the on-call and stand-by statuses which have been the focus of controversy in the debate over amending the directive. However an opt-out had been collectively agreed which allowed the employer not to count duty time towards the maximum working week. The court ruled the directive requires 'consent to be expressly and freely given by each worker individually' to the opt-out. This would seem to rule out the practice of including the opt-out with job offers and contracts as seems to happen in the UK.
Most employees know that bosses must consult before making redundancies but a case from Germany has underlined that this must happen before the die is cast. A care services company, AWO, went into liquidation in 2002. Although the liquidator, Mr.Kühnel, agreed compensation with the works council, the consultation was not found to be within the Collective Redundancies Directive. This was because Mr. Kühnel had shown by the agreement that he had already decided on redundancies and indeed subsequently announced them. The directive says that consultation must begin 'where an employer is contemplating redundancies'.
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