On October 15, 2015, the Court of Justice of the European Union (Court) ordered (judgment not available in English) Greece to pay a fixed sum of €10 million and a periodic fine of €3.64 million per semester of delay for its delay in implementing the directive on urban waste water treatment. According to the press release, the present case arose out of Greece’s failure to comply with a 2007 judgment ordering it to implement the directive. The Court found that Greece had still not completed this process and ordered the payment of a fine to ensure full compliance with its earlier judgment. The Court stressed that lack of proper waste water treatment “is likely to have an adverse effect on the environment and is thus to be regarded as particularly severe.” It accepted both the small number treatment facilities that are out of compliance and the “efforts already undertaken by Greece” as mitigating factors.  The Court considers the fixed sum appropriate “to ensure that future repetition of similar infringements of EU law is effectively prevented.”