Brussels on Italy on Italy with Four infringement procedures. The European Commission has sent three formal letters to Rome for detecting the violation of EU law regarding waste, road safety and teachers contracts. In addition to a motivated opinion on renewables, all this, which marks a further step forward towards a possible sanction.
There response of Italy In fact, on the default of the Green projects, in fact, it did not arrive at Palazzo Berlaymont, who granted two more months to the Italian government, before presenting the case to the Court of Justice EU.
The motivated opinion on renewables
The motivated opinion ended up on the table of Palazzo Chigi after the letters of the formal form sent to Italy and to 25 other EU countries in September 2024. This for not having implemented the new European rules aimed at accelerating the authorization of energy projects renewable, with the adoption in the national legislation scheduled by 1 July 2024.
Together with four other countries (Spain, Cyprus, Slovakia and Sweden), Italy has not notified the transposition measures of the directive in Brussels. He therefore has two months to respond and adopt the rules. Otherwise it could be referred to the Court of Justice of the European Union, risking one sanction.
The EU directive 2023/2413 provides new rules to simplify and to shorten the authorization procedures Both for renewable energy projects and for infrastructure, necessary to integrate the additional capacity into the national electricity grid.
EU infringement procedure: the steps
The letter of constitution to which Italy did not respond represents the First step of the EU infringement procedure. The tool used by the European Commission to protect compliance with Union law.
In the event that a Member State does not follow the requests or provide responses deemed not satisfactory, Brussels can issue a motivated opinion through which he consolidates the reference to the country and warns him to remedy in general within two months.
If the interested government does not comply with the rules of European law, Brussels can resort to the EU Court of Justice. In the event of a sentence of conviction, the Member State is called to pay a sanction and to adopt the measures provided.
The procedure on teachers
One of the infringement procedures just open against Italy concerns the fixed -term contracts of teachers. In our country, in fact, the teachers with this type of contract do not have the right to a gradual wage progression based on previous periods of service, unlike permanent colleagues.
Working conditions deemed “discriminatory“From Brussels, who asks Giorgia Meloni’s government to remedy the disputes within two months.
The waste procedure
Among the literature letters sent to Rome there is also the start of a procedure for not having correctly implemented the Directive on landfills (1999/31/EC modified by the EU Directive 2018/850), which establishes precise rules for the disposal of waste in the plants, such as:
- Location of urban waste in 10% by 2035 in landfill;
- prohibition since 2030 of the landfill displacement of waste suitable for recycling or other recovery;
- Rules on the calculation of the completion of the abjection of reduction of landfills.
On the subject, Italy is also defaulting regarding the definition of waste placed in landfill on those subjected to incinerationfor not having correctly declared the categories of materials intended for plants for hazardous waste And the specifications for the temporary storage of the metal mercury, as well as not having implemented the EU requirements on the monitoring of the gas and sampling of the groundwater in the landfills.
The road safety procedure
Finally, the European Commission has opened an infringement procedure against Rome for not organizing training and certification programs for auditor of the road safety and for not having made audit with certified auditors.
From 19 December 2013, in fact, only the auditors in possession of a professional certificate are authorized to carry out road safety audits for infrastructure projects on roads and highways.
“Although Italy has implemented these provisions in national legislation – explain from Brussels – the Commission believes that Italy does not apply them in practice“.
