On Wednesday 27 October, the European Commission published a report on the implementation of the directive on the control of the acquisition and possession of firearms, in which, although the institution notes progress, there are still serious shortcomings in the quality of the transposition of the directive by the Member States.
While the deadline for full transposition of the directive (see EUROPE 12433/3) was 14 September 2018, at this stage only ten Member States (Austria, Cyprus, Germany, Estonia, Spain, France, Hungary, Lithuania, Latvia, and Portugal) have fully transposed the directive, the report’s authors say.
Some 15 Member States have reportedly failed to transpose some of the provisions (Belgium, Bulgaria, the Czech Republic, Denmark, Greece, Finland, Croatia, Ireland, Italy, Malta, the Netherlands, Poland, Romania, Sweden, and Slovakia), and two others (Luxembourg and Slovenia) have not notified any measures.
Faced with Member States’ reluctance to fully transpose the Directive—the revision of which was rushed after the Paris attacks of November 2015—the European Commission opened infringement proceedings for non-transposition against 25 of them and against 20 for the two implementing directives on labelling and alarm weapons. As of 15 August 2021, 80 infringement proceedings relating to the Firearms Directive and secondary legislation were pending (see EUROPE 12797/22).
“The Commission will therefore step up its monitoring of the implementation in Member States, and will make full use of the powers conferred upon it by the Treaty whenever necessary”, the report confirms.
For more information: https://bit.ly/3vS0htC (Original version in French by Pascal Hansens)