Brussels, 06/01/2003 (Agence Europe) - On 6 January the European Commission decided to send reasoned opinions to thirteen Member States for failure to implement in national law one or more Internal Market Directives. It will ask Belgium, Denmark, Greece, France, Ireland, Italy, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, Portugal, Finland and the UK to implement quickly the necessary legislation in a total of twenty-six cases covering Directives on motor insurance, cultural goods, electronic commerce and the issuing of electronic money. Should a Member State which has received a reasoned opinion fail to give a satisfactory reply within two months, the Commission may refer the matter to the Court of Justice. In line with this, and after sending reasoned opinions in July 2002, the Commission will take Belgium, Germany, Spain, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, Austria and Portugal to the European Court of Justice for failure to implement the Directive on the legal protection of designs. Reasoned opinions will also be sent to nine Member States over non-implementation of the Directive on the legal protection of biotechnological inventions.
Motor insurance. The Commission will send reasoned opinions to France, Greece, Italy, Ireland, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, Portugal and the UK for non-implementation of the Fourth Motor Insurance Directive (2000/26/EC) by the agreed date of 20 July 2002. Only four Member States - Germany, Austria, Finland and Sweden - respected that deadline so the Commission has sent letters of formal notice this year to the other eleven. In the meantime, Denmark and Spain have also completed the transposition of this Directive into national law. Belgium has also adopted almost all the necessary legislation to implement the Directive. The Commission notes that in the absence of adequate implementation of the Directive in the remaining eight Member States, drivers from one Member State involved in an accident with a car registered and insured in another Member States will still have to face serious difficulties to claim compensation quickly.
Cultural goods: The Commission has decided to send reasoned opinions to Belgium, France and Luxembourg as these Member States have not notified the Commission their national measures implementing a 2001 directive, which amends a Council Directive of 1993 on the return of cultural objects unlawfully removed from the territory of a Member State. Member States had agreed to implement the Directive by 31 December 2001. On the one hand, amending directive establishes that the definition of a cultural good does not depend on its financial value. In this regard, it specifically modifies the annex of the original, with the aim to clarify that certain goods, such as early printed books or manuscripts, are to be considered as cultural goods independently of their monetary value. In addition, the 2001 Directive also converts into euros the previous ECU figures for the value thresholds above which cultural goods are covered by the earlier 93 Directive. For non-euro zone Member States, the Directive sets out value thresholds based on exchange rates applying on 31 December 2001 and subject to periodic and automatic revision.
Electronic commerce. The Commission has decided to send reasoned opinions to Belgium, France, Greece, Ireland, Italy, the Netherlands and Portugal for failing to notify national measures implementing the directive on electronic commerce. This directive obliges Member States to create a legal framework which ensures the free movement of information society services throughout the EU and which allows electronic commerce to benefit fully from the Internal Market. It took effect on 17 July 2000. The deadline for its transposition into national legislation was 17 January 2002. Member States approved this short implementation period because they agreed that it was urgent to set up a legal framework for electronic commerce. The Commission says it is aware that the Member States concerned are making major efforts to transpose the Directive in the shortest possible time and that draft laws are under discussion in all those Member States. However, in the absence of a formal adoption of these laws, the Commission has decided to continue the infringement procedures.
Electronic money institutions. The Commission will send reasoned opinions to Belgium, Finland, France and Greece for failing to adopt the measures necessary to comply with provisions adopted in 2000 on the taking up, pursuit of and prudential supervision of the business of electronic money institutions. These provisions aim to facilitate the development of electronic commerce within the EU by establishing minimum rules for ensuring that institutions issuing electronic money are stable and sound, thus promoting confidence amongst business and consumers. They also have as goal to prevent any distortion of competition between electronic money issuers, in particular between traditional credit institutions and other firms issuing electronic money. The agreed deadline for implementation was 27 April 2002.
Legal protection of designs. The Commission has decided to refer Austria, Belgium, Germany, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, Portugal and Spain, to the Court of Justice for their failure to implement into national law the directive on the legal protection of designs. The Directive was adopted in 1998 and Member States themselves agreed to implement it no later than 28 October 2001. The directive aims to ensuring a high level of protection for industrial property throughout the Internal Market. The Directive aims to ensure coherence between those national provisions of design law which most directly affect the functioning of the Internal Market. In a letter of formal notice of 5 December 2001, the Commission reminded those Member States which had not yet implemented the Directive of the need to take steps to comply with their obligation. Some Member States implemented the Directive during the first half of 2002. On 1 July 2002, the Commission decided to send a formal request asking those Member States that still had not complied with their obligations to do so. Today, the Commission has begun the last phase of the infringement procedure by referring the above mentioned seven Member States to the European Court of Justice.