Case Report: The Cost of Ignoring an EU Directive (Commission v. Bulgaria)
The EU’s response to Bulgaria’s slow transposition of public data law.
The European Union gave every country a clear deadline. Bulgaria missed it. Then came silence, excuses, and political delays. Eventually, the European Commission ran out of patience and took the matter to court. At the centre of it all was a law about public data that should have been simple to adopt. Instead, it ended in a financial penalty and a warning to other Member States.
⚖️ Litigants: Commission v. Bulgaria (re-use of public sector information)
🏛️ Court: CJEU
🗓️ Judgment Date: 22 May 2025
🗂️ Case Number: C-237/23
Bulgaria’s Delayed Transposition
Directive (EU) 2019/1024 on open data and the reuse of public sector information was meant to modernise access to publicly funded data, ensuring its availability in user-friendly formats, encouraging transparency, innovation and economic value.
The deadline for transposing the directive into national law was fixed for 17 July 2021.
However, the Republic of Bulgaria appeared to have taken a more scenic route toward compliance, one filled with postponed parliamentary sessions, multiple resubmissions, and what could only be described as a marathon of procedural detours.
The European Commission, after realising it was not receiving timely communication from Bulgaria regarding the legislative transposition, issued a formal letter of notice on 29 September 2021.
The Bulgarian authorities responded, claiming that transposition would be handled by amending the existing legislation on access to public information.
A draft law was reportedly approved by the Council of Ministers on 1 September 2021 and submitted to the National Assembly on 3 September. Unfortunately, just 11 days later, the Assembly was dissolved due to elections. Legislative progress came to a full stop.
After the elections on 14 November 2021, the Bulgarian authorities indicated the process would resume, but for the European Commission, this was already a timeline problem.
On 6 April 2022, an official reasoned opinion was sent, setting a two-month window for compliance.
Bulgaria, in turn, responded in May 2022, suggesting a revised draft law had been approved by the Council of Ministers and would soon be considered by the legislature.
However, as of early 2023, there was no evidence that any meaningful legislative adoption had occurred.
On 15 February 2023, the Commission filed an action under Article 258 and Article 260(3) TFEU, requesting a financial penalty comprising a lump sum and a daily fine.
By this point, Bulgaria had missed the original transposition deadline by over 18 months, and the Commission had grown understandably weary.
The European Commission noted that the transposition failure was both formal and substantive.
Not only had Bulgaria failed to adopt and publish the necessary legislative, regulatory, and administrative measures, but it had also failed to notify the Commission of any such measures.
Notifications that did arrive in March 2023 lacked essential references to the directive and were not accompanied by the legally required correspondence table.
One might say the Commission was expected to connect dots that were not even on the same page.
The Commission was not amused. It cited settled case law, including Commission v Belgium (C-543/17), which held that proper transposition includes explicit references and demonstrable legal effect.
Bulgaria's approach, by contrast, came across as an extended round of parliamentary charades.
As late as March 2023, the relevant bill had been submitted for a third time and was still languishing in six parliamentary committees for examination.
Eventually, progress emerged. On 27 and 29 September 2023, Bulgaria notified the Commission of the adopted amendments and provided the long-awaited correspondence table.
The Commission acknowledged in June 2024 that as of 9 October 2023, the directive could finally be considered fully transposed. Nevertheless, this late compliance did not nullify the original infringement.
From a legal standpoint, the delay in transposition undermined the uniform application of EU law.
Directive 2019/1024 was designed to support cross-border use of public data, particularly by small and medium-sized enterprises and civil society.
A key objective was to prevent legislative fragmentation and ensure that all Member States offered a reliable legal framework for data reuse.
Bulgaria’s lag disrupted this balance and required intervention to preserve legal certainty and the internal market.
Politically, the sequence of events reflected a broader issue: domestic instability spilling into EU obligations.
The dissolution of the National Assembly and subsequent elections created a vacuum in legislative activity, but from the Commission’s perspective, national political turmoil does not excuse inaction under EU law.
Deadlines are not optional, and administrative inertia, even if democratically inevitable, does not exempt a state from liability.
The judgment handed down on 22 May 2025 ultimately recognised the infringement but acknowledged the eventual correction.
The Court, noting that the directive had been transposed by 9 October 2023, ruled there was no longer a need for a daily fine.
However, it upheld the claim for a lump sum penalty of €504,000, reflecting both the seriousness of the breach and the need to deter repeat performances.
What emerges from this case is a reminder that directives come with deadlines for good reason. EU legislation is only effective when transposed and operational across all Member States.
Bulgaria’s delay, while perhaps not born of ill intent, still had tangible consequences.
It placed the Commission in the position of disciplinarian, and it subjected the Bulgarian government to financial and reputational costs that were entirely avoidable.
Penalty Payments and EU Mathematics
The European Commission, while known for its structured diplomacy, does possess a particular skill in quantifying compliance failures.
In this case of Commission v Bulgaria (C‑237/23), that skill took the form of carefully calculated financial penalties which were neither symbolic nor spontaneous.
Rather, they were the result of a methodologically precise formula that reflects how seriously the European Union treats the enforcement of its legislative framework.
At the centre of the case is Article 258 of the Treaty on the Functioning of the European Union (TFEU), which allows the Commission to bring a Member State before the Court of Justice if it believes that State has failed to fulfil its obligations under EU law.
In this instance, Bulgaria had failed to transpose Directive (EU) 2019/1024 on open data and reuse of public sector information by the deadline of 17 July 2021.
That directive requires Member States to make data held by public sector bodies available for reuse under clear and practical conditions.
The aim is to facilitate wider access to data for both commercial and non-commercial purposes and to support innovation and transparency across the Union.
Bulgaria’s transposition was not only late, but the communication to the Commission was also incomplete and delayed.
As a result, the Commission relied on Article 260(3) TFEU to seek financial penalties, which include a lump sum and a potential daily fine.
These EU penalties are not randomly selected from a drawer of disapproval.
They are generated through a formula combining economic capacity, duration of non-compliance, and the seriousness of the infringement.
The Commission’s starting point was to assign a coefficient of gravity to the breach.
For infringements related to the non-communication of transposition measures for legislative directives, a default gravity score of 10 is applied.
This reflects the importance of legal certainty and uniform application of EU law.
It also sends a clear signal that failing to communicate is not treated as a paperwork oversight. It is a structural failure that risks undermining the single market.
Next comes the factor known in Brussels circles as "n" — a value based primarily on a Member State’s GDP and adjusted slightly for population.
This number represents the state’s capacity to pay.
For Bulgaria, the "n" factor was 0.18, reflecting Bulgaria’s relatively smaller economic size within the European Union, ensuring the penalty is proportionate while still delivering a financial sting.
This n-value is then multiplied by the gravity coefficient and a standard base rate to arrive at daily penalties and a lump sum equivalent.
For the lump sum, the Commission proposed €1,000 per day for the duration of the infringement, starting from 18 July 2021 until the date on which Bulgaria was considered compliant, that is, 9 October 2023.
Given that this amounted to a period of over 800 days, the theoretical total easily exceeded the EU’s minimum threshold for lump sums.
Nonetheless, the Commission applied a floor value of €504,000, which it considered appropriate given the circumstances and consistent with its 2023 communication on financial sanctions.
As for the daily fine, the part designed to keep Member States on their toes even after proceedings have begun, the Commission initially requested a daily penalty of €9,720.
This was derived from multiplying the fixed daily base of €3,000 by the gravity coefficient of 10 and Bulgaria’s n-value of 0.18.
However, by the time judgment was issued, Bulgaria had already transposed the directive, albeit fashionably late.
Consequently, the Commission withdrew this part of its request and the Court did not impose the daily fine.
Still, the lump sum remained in play.
The Court confirmed that Bulgaria had failed in its obligations under Article 17 of the Directive and under the Treaty by not adopting and notifying transposition measures within the deadline.
The failure was persistent and only corrected after the Commission had filed the legal action.
The absence of timely communication meant that even if some measures were underway, they were legally invisible to the Commission.
For an institution built on orderly processes, that was more than enough to justify the financial penalty.
The Court awarded the full lump sum requested by the Commission. The total fine was a function of legal failure, economic capacity, and the sheer number of days Bulgaria let pass before closing the compliance gap.
While Bulgaria’s eventual correction did prevent a larger sanction, it did not erase the fine.
In conclusion, the penalty system under Article 260(3) TFEU is a structured, transparent method to ensure that directives are not optional.
The mathematics behind it ensures consistency while giving the Commission a credible enforcement tool.
Why Public Sector Data Is Critically Important
The European Union has been unusually clear that public sector data is far more than a bureaucratic archive.
The Directive (EU) 2019/1024 treats public sector information as a foundational ingredient for economic development, digital innovation, and improved democratic accountability.
The directive is built on the premise that public sector bodies produce and hold an enormous volume of valuable data as part of their daily operations.
This includes everything from transport schedules to environmental records, land registries, financial reports, and datasets gathered by publicly funded research.
Rather than allow these resources to remain underused, the directive requires that this information be made available to the public in formats that can be reused freely, easily, and effectively.
According to the recitals of the directive, especially recital 9, the reuse of public sector data is expected to have tangible economic impacts.
The EU explicitly links access to such information with the development of new applications and services that benefit both consumers and businesses.
Furthermore, the directive is clear that such information, when processed using digital tools, including artificial intelligence, can result in meaningful transformation across all economic sectors.
It is no coincidence that the law requires these datasets to be made available in formats that are machine-readable and accessible through standardised interfaces.
This design is intended to reduce technical barriers and ensure that even small companies or non-profit organisations can work with the data.
The objective is horizontal access across Member States, creating opportunities not just for multinational enterprises but also for small developers or researchers in lesser-known corners of the Union.
The directive also takes a firm position on pricing.
It mandates that reuse should be free of charge or, at most, based on the marginal costs of dissemination.
This provision reduces barriers to entry for data-based innovation and ensures that public data remains a public good.
There are limited exceptions, such as when institutions rely on cost recovery to maintain operations, but those are carefully circumscribed.
In practical terms, this means no aggressive monetisation strategies by public authorities and no commercial licensing models that confuse access with ownership.
Of particular note is the attention given to high-value datasets.
These are specifically identified because they are likely to generate the highest societal and economic benefits.
Member States are obliged to release them using machine-readable formats and APIs. That is a strong signal that the EU intends these datasets to serve as the building blocks for applications, analysis, and public transparency tools.
The legal architecture here is designed to support an open data culture across Member States.
Without uniform rules, divergent national practices risk undermining the single market.
Some countries might charge high fees, others might use outdated formats, and others might simply withhold access altogether.
The directive aims to avoid that patchwork, making access to information predictable, fair, and aligned with EU values of openness and accountability.
In summary, public sector information is considered valuable because of its untapped potential, not its archival appearance.
By mandating access, standardising technical formats, limiting pricing structures, and targeting high-value datasets, the EU directive positions this information as an essential resource for progress.
That wraps up this newsletter on the EU case of Commission v Bulgaria and the importance of publishing public data. We would love to hear your thoughts, questions, or even objections.