Infringement Procedure – The case of Romania

Abstract: In this article, we propose to present the stages of application of the Infringement Procedure against the member states of the Union that fail to fulfil the obligations arising from the legislation of the European Union. Under the provisions of the Treaty of Lisbon, the European Commission has the power to initiate this procedure ex officio or following a referral and decide to refer the case to the Court of Justice of the European Union, if the Member State concerned does not take the necessary measures to comply with Union law. Failure to comply with a judgment of the Court of Justice by the Member State concerned, shall enable the Commission to refer the case back to the Court of Justice and to propose that the Court impose financial penalties. Also, if the Member State does not communicate in time the measures taken to transpose the provisions of a European Directive, the Commission may request the Court to apply financial penalties to that State. The case of Romania regarding the application of this procedure, known as "Infringement", is presented in detail in the monitoring documents published by the European Commission, such as the 2019 Annual Report on monitoring the implementation of EU law, which provides official data and information on the evaluation and ranking of the Member States of the Union in this matter, from which we will capture some comparative aspects that we consider to be significant and relevant. Last but not least, we will present some recent exemplary situations of application of the Infringement Procedure, in the case of Romania. Keywords: Infringement Procedure, European Commission, Court of Justice of the European Union, Annual monitoring report, case of Romani