22It ought to be borne in mind that the Court has consistently held (Case 8/81 Becker [1982] ECR 53, paragraphs 23 to 25, and Case C-188/89 Foster and Others [1990] ECR I-3313, paragraph 16) that where the Community authorities have, by means of a directive, placed Member States under an obligation to adopt a certain course of action, the effectiveness of such a measure would be diminished if persons were prevented from relying upon it in proceedings before a court and national courts were prevented from taking it into consideration as an element of Community law. Consequently, a Member State which has not adopted the implementing measures required by the directive within the prescribed period may not plead, as against individuals, its own failure to perform the obligations which the directive entails. Thus, wherever the provisions of a directive appear, as far as their subject-matter is concerned, to be unconditional and sufficiently precise, those provisions may, in the absence of implementing measures adopted within the prescribed period, be relied upon as against any national provision which is incompatible with the directive or in so far as the provisions define rights which individuals are able to assert against the State.
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