The Commission has ruled Austria guilty of breaching the Wild Birds Directive 79/409/EEC, because it had not designated the areas of Soren en Gleggen-Köblern as SPAs, Special Protected Areas. Austria was not condemned for breaching the Habitats Directive of 1992 even though the Commission had claimed it had, because Austria had allowed the construction of a highway near the sites. The ECJ reasoned, like it had in previous EIA-cases, that the fact that the plans for the highway already existed before Austria’s accession to the EU in 1995, this precluded the directive from being applicable in this case.