On September 5th, the sentence of the Court of Justice of the EU was published stating that Italy has breached the obligation to adopt measures to prevent the spread of Xylella fastidiosa in the region of Apulia (southern Italy).
Specifically, it has not fulfilled two of the obligations established in the Brussels decisions, in 2016, regarding the containment measures to be taken against the bacteria in that country:
- The immediate felling of infected plants located in a strip, within the infected area, 20 kilometers wide at the outer edge of that area.
- Italy has not guaranteed, in the containment zone, the surveillance of the presence of Xylella fastidiosa through annual inspections at the appropriate times of the year, which allow the elimination of infected plants in a timely manner.
The Commission wanted to declare a persistent and general breach of Italy: the obligation to prevent the spread of the disease. But, in this case, the judges have dismissed Brussels’s claim because that would mean that the Italian authorities would not have fulfilled their obligations outside the containment zone.