Judgment_paragraph 64 · European Commission v Romania (C-549/18)

64As regards, in the first place, the argument that it would be disproportionate to impose a lump sum since, in the course of the proceedings, Romania put an end to the infringement at issue, it must be borne in mind, first, that the failure of a Member State to fulfil its obligation to notify measures transposing a directive, whether by providing no information at all, partial information or by providing insufficiently clear and precise information, may of itself justify recourse to the procedure under Article 258 TFEU in order to establish the failure to fulfil the obligation (judgment of 8 July 2019, Commission v Belgium (Article 260(3) TFEU — High-speed networks), C‑543/17, EU:C:2019:573, paragraph 51). Secondly, the objective pursued by the introduction of the system set out in Article 260(3) TFEU is not only to induce Member States to put an end as soon as possible to a breach of obligations which, in the absence of such a measure, would tend to persist, but also to simplify and speed up the procedure for imposing financial penalties for failures to comply with the obligation to notify a national measure transposing a directive adopted through a legislative procedure, it being specified that, prior to the introduction of such a system, it might be years before a financial penalty was imposed on Member States which had failed to comply in a timely manner with an earlier judgment of the Court and failed to respect their obligations to transpose a directive (judgment of 8 July 2019, Commission v Belgium (Article 260(3) TFEU — High-speed networks), C‑543/17, EU:C:2019:573, paragraph 52).