Brussels, 02/03/2010 (Agence Europe) - The - Competitiveness Council on Monday 1 March paid great attention to a progress report published by the European Commission on transposition of the EU Directive 2006/112/EC on services in the Internal Market that was supposed to come into force in all Member States' legal systems on 31 December 2009 (see EUROPE 10088). The report identifies three urgent areas of action: - Greece and Slovenia must finish assessing their own legislation covered by the new directive; - Ireland and Portugal must finalise their legislation to transpose the directive into domestic law and nine member states, namely Austria, Cyprus, Greece, Finland, Ireland, Luxembourg, Portugal, Romania and Slovenia, must draw up legislation to adjust existing rules; - and six member states (Greece, Italy, Poland, Slovakia, Romania and Slovenia) must open one-stop-shops or substantially reinforce capacity in other ways in order to provide public information about their legislation and allow certain administrative procedures to be carried out. Measures have been taken to allow the use of electronic documents and signatures to facilitate communication between the one-stop-shops and a single market information system involving more than 4,200 national and regional authorities will try and speed up cooperation between civil services, with 200 public bodies able to connect up each day.
Member states and the European Commission alike are starting to examine legislation covered by the Services Directive. This is the first time such a peer assessment has taken place and it is expected to last all year. The peer review is looking at nearly 16,000 rules on the establishment of services (permit application systems, for example) and more than 19,000 rules on the supply of services in other countries. The rules in question have been submitted by all the member states, apart from Greece and Slovenia. The Commission will report back at the end of the year, warning member states that it will issue infringement proceedings where necessary. (M.B./transl.fl)