ABSTRACT
One of the Commission’s tasks is to ensure that member states comply with EC laws adopted by the Community institutions. Since it does not have an environmental inspectorate to help it in this task, the Commission relies very heavily on information from outside sources to draw its attention to breaches of EC environmental law. To obtain this information, the Commission has established a ‘complaints procedure’ which allows anyone to write to it to complain about breaches of EC environmental law in any of the member states. The Commission will investigate these complaints and can start ‘infringement proceedings’ (also known as ‘enforcement’/‘infraction’/Article 169’ proceed ings) against the state if it believes that the state is in breach of EC environmental law.
