16/12/2009 - ECJ dismisses £5bn infringement action against United Kingdom

The ECJ has in its judgment of 10^th December in Case C-390/07 dismissed an infringement action brought by the Commission against the United Kingdom alleging failure to fulfil its obligations in respect of the treatment and discharge of urban waste water into six bodies of water including Southampton water, the Thames and Humber estuaries, the Wash and the north-east Irish Sea.

In a lengthy and detailed 69 page judgment, the ECJ demonstrated a willingness, unusual among international courts, to grapple with complex scientific issues.  It held that the six bodies of water were at the material time neither eutrophic nor likely to become so.

Also of interest was the nature of the hearing in Luxembourg: an exceptionally flexible and interactive occasion at which each advocate was permitted to speak for double his allotted time and was then subject to prolonged and sometimes technical questioning by the Court.  The fact that no Advocate General was assigned to the case, with the result that the judges were able to begin their deliberations immediately, may have been partly responsible for this. 

Had the United Kingdom been found to be in breach of its obligations, more than £5bn would have had to be spent upgrading sewage plants to standards that already apply in some other Member States.