Judgment_paragraph 66 · Landelijke Vereniging tot Behoud van de Waddenzee and Nederlandse Vereniging tot Bescherming van Vogels v Staatssecretaris van Landbouw, Natuurbeheer en Visserij (C-127/02)

66As regards the right of an individual to rely on a directive and of the national court to take it into consideration, it would be incompatible with the binding effect attributed to a directive by Article 249 EC to exclude, in principle, the possibility that the obligation which it imposes may be relied on by those concerned. In particular, where the Community authorities have, by directive, imposed on Member States the obligation to pursue a particular course of conduct, the effectiveness of such an act would be weakened if individuals were prevented from relying on it before their national courts, and if the latter were prevented from taking it into consideration as an element of Community law in order to rule whether the national legislature, in exercising the choice open to it as to the form and methods for implementation, has kept within the limits of its discretion set by the directive (see Kraaijeveld and Others, paragraph 56). That also applies to ascertaining whether, failing transposition into national law of the relevant provision of the directive concerned, the national authority which has adopted the contested measure has kept within the limits of its discretion set by that provision.