Portugal will have to pay dearly for the delay in protecting its natural habitats. The Court of Justice of the European Union has in fact condemned Lisbon to pay a lump sum of 10 million euros for failing to follow up on a previous 2019 ruling on the protection of biodiversity. And it doesn’t end there: in addition to the maxi fine, a penalty of 41,250 euros per day will also be applied until the country fully adapts to the decision.
At the center of the matter is the failure to apply the Habitats Directive, one of the pillars of European environmental policy. A legislation that serves to protect natural habitats and threatened animal and plant species, and which has given rise to the Natura 2000 ecological network, the largest in the world.
This network is made up of two types of protected areas: the special conservation areas provided for by the Habitats Directive and the special protection areas established by the Birds Directive. The mechanism is clear: together with the Member States, the European Commission identifies sites of community importance, which must then be designated as special conservation areas within six years, with concrete measures to safeguard habitats and species.
And it is precisely here that Portugal missed the appointment. With a ruling dated 5 September 2019, the Court had already established that the country had not respected its obligations: 61 sites of community importance, located in the Atlantic and Mediterranean biogeographical regions, which had not been designated as special areas of conservation, were missing. Not only that: not even the necessary measures to protect them had been adopted.
Since that decision remained essentially a dead letter, on 21 September 2024 the European Commission returned to the office with a new infringement action, asking the Court to impose financial sanctions. And now the judges’ response has arrived: Portugal has not yet fully implemented the sentence.
According to the Court, the legislation adopted so far simply designates some sites as special areas of conservation, but without clearly indicating which natural habitats or species are present in each of them. Furthermore, there is a lack of adequate conservation measures, i.e. those concrete actions necessary to maintain or restore the health of ecosystems. A shortcoming which, for European judges, is anything but marginal. In fact, the Portuguese territory is home to a biodiversity of great value: 99 types of habitat and 335 species protected by the Habitats Directive.
Precisely for this reason the Court classified the infringement as particularly serious. Taking into account the importance of the natural heritage involved, the duration of the violation and the economic capacity of the Member State, a flat-rate fine of 10 million euros was set.
But the economic pressure doesn’t end there. Portugal will also have to pay a daily penalty of 41,250 euros until the 2019 sentence is fully implemented. The amount may be progressively reduced – by 750 euros per day – for each site that is brought into compliance with the obligations of the directive.
In other words, the fine will continue to be issued until all the sites involved are truly protected within the Natura 2000 network. And until habitats and species finally have the protections that, on paper, they should have had years ago.
