The European Commission has decided to refer two cases against Luxembourg to the European Court of Justice concerning two directives that have not been transposed or have been incorrectly transposed. Photo: Romain Gamba/Maison Moderne/Archives

The European Commission has decided to refer two cases against Luxembourg to the European Court of Justice concerning two directives that have not been transposed or have been incorrectly transposed. Photo: Romain Gamba/Maison Moderne/Archives

The European Commission has decided to bring two cases against Luxembourg before the European Court of Justice for failure to transpose EU directives. These concern alarm and signal weapons and the protection of whistleblowers.

The European Commission announced on Wednesday 15 February that it would refer two cases against Luxembourg--and several other EU countries__to the European Court of Justice for failure to transpose European rules.

In the first case, the grand duchy is the only country concerned. The case concerns the implementation of directive 2019/69, which sets common technical standards for alarm and signal weapons, as required by the firearms directive 2021/555. . It was supposed to be transposed into national law by 14 September 2018, but was finally published in the Official Journal on 3 February 2022, according to the Chamber of Deputies website.

The directive had to be transposed by 17 January 2020. “The Commission launched this infringement procedure against Luxembourg in May 2020 by sending a letter of formal notice and followed up with a reasoned opinion in February 2022. On 8 March 2022, Luxembourg notified the Commission of the transposition of the Commission Implementing Directive. After examination of the national transposition measures, the Commission considers that there is a gap in the notified transposing measures, making the transposition not complete,” the European institution stated. When asked about the shortcomings, it had not yet provided Delano’s sister publication Paperjam with details at the time of publication of the article. The directive aims to “avoid the risk of alarm and signal weapons being manufactured in such a way that they are capable of being converted to expel a shot, bullet or projectile.”

Defects on whistleblower protection

In addition to Luxembourg, 7 other countries are targeted by the second matter: the Czech Republic, Germany, Estonia, Spain, Italy, Hungary and Poland. This is for failure to transpose directive 2019/1937, which requires member states to provide whistleblowers with effective channels to report violations of EU rules in confidence. The text was to be incorporated into national law by 17 December 2021.

The in the LuxLeaks case.

The text has been transposed into a bill, numbered 7945, but the chamber’s website indicates that it is still in committee.

What does the country intend to do? When contacted, the ministry of justice had not yet replied to Paperjam at the time of publication of this article.

This story was first published in French on . It has been translated and edited for Delano.