Croatia Receives Two Letters of Formal Notice for Breaking EU Law
ZAGREB, 12 Nov 2021- Croatia on Friday received two letters of formal notice from the European Commission as part of its regular package of infringement decisions, and one concerns waste disposal while the other relates to the transposition of new EU-wide rules for VAT on e-commerce.
Landfilling
The Commission called on Croatia, Bulgaria, Greece, Romania and Slovakia to correctly apply the Landfill Directive and the Waste Framework Directive.
The Landfill Directive sets standards for landfills to prevent adverse effects on human health, water, soil and air. Under this Directive, Member States must take measures to ensure that only waste that has been subject to treatment is landfilled.
The European Green Deal and the Zero Pollution Action Plan set a zero pollution ambition for the EU, which benefits public health, the environment and climate neutrality.
In its judgment of 15 October 2014, the Court of Justice of the European Union ruled that, before landfilling, waste must be treated in the most appropriate way to reduce negative impacts on the environment and human health as far as possible. Following this ruling, in 2015, the Commission launched a study to investigate the landfilling of untreated non-hazardous municipal solid waste in Member States.
In Croatia, the study analysed five landfills of non-hazardous waste in five different counties. The study revealed shortcomings in all visited sites and that municipal waste is being landfilled without any treatment. The landfills subject to investigation are lacking infrastructure capacities and so are the counties where these landfills are located.
Taxation
Croatia, Denmark and Lithuania were called upon to explain how they transposed the VAT e-commerce package into national law.
The Commission has decided to open infringement proceedings against Denmark, Croatia and Lithuania for non-communication of the explanatory documents in relation to the transposition of new EU-wide rules for VAT on e-commerce.
The new rules are intended to simplify VAT for companies and consumers involved in cross-border online sales within the EU and to create a fairer environment for EU sellers by removing the VAT exemption for low-value imports from outside the European Union.
In line with Court of Justice case law, Member States must indicate in a sufficiently clear and precise manner the national measures by which they transposed obligations imposed by an EU Directive. Since Denmark, Croatia and Lithuania have failed to provide clear explanations on the way they have transposed these directives, the Commission cannot check that these Member States have completely and correctly transposed the relevant provisions into national law. Denmark, Croatia and Lithuania now have two months to act. Otherwise, the Commission may decide to send reasoned opinions.
A letter of formal notice is the first step in the infringement procedure, launched by the Commission against Member States deemed to be in contravention of EU law. If the matter is not resolved, the Commission sends a reasoned opinion, and if that also fails, it refers the matter to the Court of Justice.
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Parliament Discusses Amendments To Protection Against Noise Act
ZAGREB, Sept 9, 2020 - The Croatian parliament resumed its extraordinary session on Wednesday with a discussion on amendments to Protection Against Noise Act proposing measures to prevent excessive noise emissions, reduce the existing noise levels to the permissible levels, and align with EU law.
State authorities, local and regional government units, legal and natural persons are required to ensure protection against noise nuisance, while inspections are done by sanitary inspectors from the State Inspectorate, said MP Ivan Kirin of the ruling Croatian Democratic Union (HDZ).
Anka Mrak Taritas of the Civic Liberal Alliance (GLAS) asked if it was possible to arrange that church bells did not ring after midnight, especially in small tourist towns where visitors complain about the noise, to which she was told that the church bells were exempt from the law.
She also drew attention to the problem of apartment buildings with shops and cafes or restaurants that can be a source of noise nuisance. Silvano Hrelja of the Croatian Pensioners' Party (HSU) agreed with her, calling for the matter to be addressed interdepartmentally.
Noise second biggest cause of illness
Social Democrat Renata Sabljak Dracevac announced the SDP's support for the bill saying that it would align national law with that of the EU and provide citizens with much better noise protection.
Tomislav Tomasevic of the left-green bloc welcomed the bill, noting that noise was the second biggest cause of illness in humans, after air pollution.
Miro Bulj (Bridge) said that everything was done in the interest of profit, adding that EU laws are diligently copied but not obeyed. He underscored traffic as one of the main sources of noise.
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