Penalties and Selected Legal Issues
Implementing the EU Methane Regulation Working Paper N° 3
- Publication
- Citation
Piria, Raffaele, Stephan Sina and Lina-Marie Dück 2024: Implementing the EU Methane Regulation, Working paper N° 3. Penalties and selected legal issues. Ecologic Institute, Berlin. Available at: https://www.ecologic.eu/19720
This publication discusses the penalty regime to be established by the EU Member States to sanction infringements against the recently adopted EU Methane Regulation (EU-MER). In these regimes, (administrative) fines will play a major role. The EU-MER stipulates that the level of fines must be proportionate to the environmental damage and impact on human health associated with the infringement as the core criterion. The working paper proposes applying a core reference value of 6.000 EUR/tCH4 to be adjusted according to the aggravating or mitigating factors foreseen by the regulation.
The paper also discusses selected legal issues related to EU-MER implementation at the national level: The legal powers the competent authorities need to effectively fulfil their tasks; how to operationalise the "reasonable efforts", which importers must undertake to comply with their obligations concerning ongoing supply contracts; and the extent to which the competent authorities may delegate inspection activities to private entities.
There are two other papers in this series focusing on EU-MER implementation at the national level: