41. I also note that, under Article 16(3) of Regulation No 261/2004, ‘the sanctions laid down by Member States for infringements of this Regulation shall be effective, proportionate and dissuasive’. Those sanctions are clearly different, in their nature and scope, from the enforcement action by which the national body seeks to secure payment of the compensation due to an air passenger on account of the cancellation of his or her flight, which is a fixed sum. In Ruijssenaars and Others, the Court thus held that the ‘sanctions’ to which the EU legislature refers in that article are the measures that the national body adopts in response to the infringements which it identifies in the performance of its general monitoring task, ‘not … administrative enforcement action to be taken in each individual case’. (28)
42. Since, as the Court has found, the provisions set out in Article 16(2) and (3) of Regulation No 261/2004 specifically identify ‘the various aspects of the task entrusted to the body referred to in Article 16(1)’, (2 9) they cannot therefore be interpreted as precluding the possibility of conferring on the national body powers other than those relating to the handling of reports brought to its attention and the imposition of sanctions.
43. In the absence of rules established by EU law, Member States therefore enjoy discretion as regards the allocation to that national body of powers intended to ensure that the rights of air passengers are respected. Against that background, and in the light of the wording used in Article 16 of Regulation No 261/2004, there is nothing to prevent a Member State from conferring on that body the power to order an air carrier to pay the compensation due to a passenger, in accordance with Articles 5 and 7 of that regulation.
44. That interpretation is also, to my mind, supported by both the scheme and the objectives of that regulation.
2. The scheme and objectives of Regulation No 261/2004
45. The scope of the tasks entrusted to the national body must also be assessed in the light of the nature of the compensation provided for in Article 7 of Regulation No 261/2004 and the objectives pursued by the EU legislature.