Delays in bringing European Directives into national law can be a very costly game to play.

As Poslovni Dnevnik reports on the 9th of September, 2017, there have been two lawsuits launched by the European Commission against Croatia at the EU Court in Luxembourg.

If, in these two cases, the Luxembourg court rules in favor of the European Commission and not Croatia, the country would face a fine of about €19,000, (approximately 140,000 HRK) per day, writes Novi List.

These complaints were filed by the Commission in both June and July. In both complaints, the Commission argues that Croatia did not introduce regulations or measures to comply with EU directives in due course, or, at the very least, did not notify the Commission in a timely manner.

In a lawsuit filed in June, the Commission asked the Court to find that Croatia has failed to comply with the obligations under the Consumer Credit Contracts Directive relating to residential real estate, because, by the 21st of March 2016, the country failed to comply with legal and other regulations required with regard to that particular Directive.

Brussels believes that the Court should order a fine of 9,865 euros per day from the day of its publication. The lawsuit filed in July is similar to the amendments to the directives on the statutory audits of annual financial statements and consolidated financial statements, and the penalties requested by the Commission amount to 9,275 euros per day.

A response to the June lawsuit was adopted last week, and as is the standard practice, the Government did not announce their response. The Ministry of Finance has not offered anything in the way of a response to the question of whether or not the EU Court has been informed of when the Republic of Croatia will align itself with the directive in question. However, it can be concluded that the Government is counting on avoiding the hefty payments.

Translated from Poslovni.hr