Despite improvements in managing infringement procedures, enforcing compliance with EU legislation is still taking too long, the European Court of Auditors has found in an audit report published on Tuesday 17 December regarding the way in which the European Commission acts as ‘guardian of the Treaties’.
“While the European Commission has improved its management to detect and correct infringements of EU law, it can still take years to rectify infringements”, said Lefteris Christoforou, the member of the court responsible for the audit.
To improve its management of infringement procedures, the Commission has developed benchmarks which it is endeavouring to meet, an initiative welcomed by the court, although it deplores the lack of communication on progress made.
For example, the deadline for checking that EU rules have been fully transposed (objective: 6 months) and that national rules comply with those of the EU (24 months) has shortened, but performance exceeds the set deadlines in 50% of the checks carried out. The court also notes that outsourcing the verification task, in particular because of insufficient internal resources, has not improved performance.
In addition, in 38% of cases, the European Commission does not respect another self-imposed time limit (one year) between registering a complaint received and opening infringement proceedings. In this area, the court recommends that information regularly be provided to complainants on the follow-up given to their complaints, and that complaints be prioritised or even grouped together.
‘EU Pilot’. The auditors refer to the ‘EU Pilot’ process of dialogue between the European Commission and the Member States to deal with complex cases. This process is proving effective in resolving problems without opening formal infringement proceedings, they observe. But here again, they point to the average time of two years taken to process cases.
Fines. Most infringement procedures are resolved before the Commission proposes financial penalties. However, the court notes that there are cases where States have not complied several years after being subject to financial penalties.
Between 1992 and the end of 2023, the Court of Justice of the European Union imposed financial penalties on Member States in 47 cases. For 31 of them, the Member States legislated to comply with EU law, on average 16 months after financial penalties were imposed. For all these closed cases, the Member States paid fines totalling €258.9 million (€88.5 million for France, €80 million for Spain, €46.5 million for Greece), the sector most affected being fisheries (€77.8 million).
At the end of 2023, in sixteen cases still active, EU countries were still subject to financial penalties amounting to €1.4 billion. This mainly concerns Italy (€1.04 billion), Greece (€284 million) and Spain (€84.3 million), for cases relating primarily to the environment (existence of illegal landfill sites in Greece - C-378/13, and in Italy - C-196/13).
See the audit report by the European Court of Auditors: https://aeur.eu/f/eus (Original version in French by Mathieu Bion)