Landfills: Commission refers ROMANIA to the Court of Justice of the EU over illegal landfills

AO. whereas the Commission reports that 177 infringements of the Landfill Directive have been initiated since 2001 and that a recent inventory identified a minimum of 619 illegal landfills across the EU;

AQ. whereas the Commission reports that 177 infringements of the Landfill Directive have been initiated since 2001 and that a recent inventory identified a minimum of 619 illegal landfills across the EU;

Greece faces serious problems with illegal landfill disposal and was condemned, as you know, by the Court in 2005 due to the huge number of illegal landfills that had been operating in its territory.

It is extraordinary that nine years after the Landfill Directive came into force, Spain is now being prosecuted before the European Court of Justice for having 60 000 illegal landfills, taking up more than half-a-million tonnes of illegally dumped waste.

The problem is this: the interest of organised crime and its infiltration into waste management, which has resulted in countless illegal dumps scattered over the Campania region; the constant acceptance of dangerous and toxic waste from other regions, especially northern Italy; the weakness of the local authorities; the cultural backwardness of the population in its approach to waste as a resource; the vetoes relating to the siting of various waste disposal plant, even by representatives of the local Catholic Church; the divisions not only in political but also in scientific circles regarding, for example, disposal methods; the ina ...[+++]dequate technology chosen for the planned end-disposal plant following a European call for tenders in Campania in 1998.