Displaying items by tag: Court

Slovenia: Slovenia faces EU judicial proceedings for its alleged failure to fully-implement a system of environmental permits for its large industrial plants. The case referred to the EU Court of Justice relates to one of the country's two cement producers, which continues to operate without permits.

The Commission said that matter would be referred to the court for failure to implement provisions of the integrated pollution prevention and control (IPPC) directive of 2007, which requires that industrial plants be licensed to verify that they meet strict environmental controls. It is the second time that Slovenia has faced EU court action over the IPPC directive, after the Court of Justice found in 2010 that Slovenia was running afoul rules requiring that all plants meet the set requirements.

The EU is seeking a base fine of Euro1.6m for the country plus Euro9009 for each day that the violation persists. The Slovenian Ministry of Environment and Spatial Planning said that it was, "Striving to implement as quickly as possible the alleged violations of EU law." Licenses under the IPPC directive became a requirement for member states as of 30 October 2007. According to the Commission, Slovenia has made considerable progress since the 2010 ruling, but full compliance with the judgement has still not been reached.

The new case concerns 'a major cement factory,' which continues to operate without a permit. While it avoided naming the plant, Slovenia has two cement plants owned by Salonit Anhovo and Lafarge. Whereas Salonit Anhovo is a licensed IPPC plant, Lafarge is involved in lengthy bureaucratic and legal proceedings in seeking a permit. It has faced ongoing protests from local groups against it being granted a license. Despite not having a license, the plant continues to operate.

The Environment Ministry said that one of the factors influencing the length of procedures was a ruling by an administrative court in Slovenia demanding that Lafarge's plant be treated as a new facility rather than an existing installation. The Environment Agency, which issues permits, is therefore obliged to complete all procedures prescribed for licensing of new plants.

Egypt: The Supreme Administrative Court has decided to pause an investigation into the appeal against the privatisation of Beni Suef Cement Company.

The court ordered the reinstatement of workers to the company, but decided to suspend looking into the appeal of the privatisation. The suspension is pending another court decision in a case questioning the constitutionality of a law issued in 2014, which bans third parties from challenging sales or investment contracts signed between the government and investors.

The law in question stipulates that courts must suspend viewing appeals of contracts, even if the cases were brought to court prior to the issuance of the law. The law was approved in April 2014 by former interim president Adli Mansour and was heavily criticised by the Egyptian Centre for Social and Economic Rights (ECESR) for its issuance. The ECESR said that the law 'wastes the rights of citizens and workers from detecting suspicions of corruption' in contracts.

The controversy over Beni Suef Cement is more than a decade old. The plant, which has an annual production capacity of 1.5Mt/yr, was sold in 1999 and was then owned as a joint venture project by Lafarge and Titan. In 2002, Titan acquired the shares owned by Lafarge and has since wholly-owned the plant.

In February 2014, an administrative court ruled in favour of the privatisation but ordered reinstating the workers, as stipulated in the sales contract. The court ruling was appealed by the workers, who want the privatisation to be reversed and by company officials, who do not want to bear the costs of reinstating the workers.