Brussels, 13/07/2004 (Agence Europe) - Member States are still too slow in transposing Community Internal Market provisions. Such is the main conclusion reached by the latest Internal Market Scoreboard published by the European Commission on Tuesday, an edition of the scoreboard that confirms the trends noted in the previous scoreboards - “good” and “bad” pupils remain the same - and reveals major disparities between the new member States in implementation of the directives.
As far as the transposition of regulations is concerned, the scoreboard shows that: - the transposition deficit - i.e. the average percentage per Member State of Internal market Directives in force that has not been -written into national law - is now 2.2% for EU15 Member States, barely changed from January 2004; - 134 (or 9%) of Internal market Directives have not been transposed on time into national law in one or more of those Member States. In some cases, transposition is over two years overdue; - France has the worst record of EU15 Member States, followed by Greece, Germany, Italy and the Benelux countries; - Denmark, Spain, UK, Ireland and Finland again meet the 1.5% interim target set by the European Council; - First indications are of big disparities among the 10 new Member States in implementing Directives. Some, such as Lithuania and Slovenia, have notified national implementing laws for the vast majority of Directives. However, others such as Malta, Slovakia and the Czech Republic have still much to do.
The scoreboard shows that the number of infringement cases is practically the same as the past year. The 2003-2006 strategy for the Internal Market called for a 50% reduction by 2006. It is Italy, followed closely by France, which has the largest number of infringement cases. These two countries together represent nearly 30% of the cases. The infringement cases noted for Italy are almost as many in number as the total number of cases noted for Denmark, Sweden, Finland, Luxembourg and Portugal. The Commission notes that the SOLVIT network has helped to rapidly decrease the difficulties encountered by companies and citizens by resolving 75% of the 262 cases dealt with on average over a duration of 10 weeks. It deplores, moreover, that a large number of national standards organisations are failing to transpose European standards on time. Ten Member States have a transposition deficit of over 3,000 standards.
Finally, the results of the scoreboard are hardly more optimistic concerning the practical effects of the Internal Market. This year's Internal Market index shows that the evolution of the EU towards a fully operational Single Market has slowed down since 2000. Also, an inquiry into the price of food products carried out with the support of the Commission shows a mixed picture on price convergence. Prices for some well-known brands (such as Coca Cola and Snickers) varied more in 2003 than in 2001, while prices of other well-known brands (such as Twix, Uncle Ben's rice and Gillette disposable razors) converged. No discernible pattern in price convergence of non-branded goods was detected. The survey also examined the cost of buying a basket of 24 groceries in EU15 Member States. Germany and Spain were cheapest and Ireland the most expensive. The full text of the latest edition of the scoreboard can by consulted at: http: //http://www.europa.eu.int/comm/internal_market/score/index_en.htm