Brussels, 28/12/2004 (Agence Europe) - The European Commission has decided to pursue a total of fourteen infringement cases involving eight Member States in order to ensure that they live up to the commitments they have made to implement single market laws on financial services, accounting and the recognition of professional qualifications. In July 2004, the average implementation deficit (the percentage of Directives that have not been implemented in national law in due time) for the EU as a whole was 2.2%. The target set by Heads of Government at successive European Councils is 1.5 %.
Financial Services. The Commission has decided to refer Greece, France and Luxembourg to the European Court of Justice for non-transposition into national law of Directive 2002/47 on financial guarantees (collateral), after sending them reasoned opinions in July 2004. It has also decided to issue a reasoned opinion against the Netherlands. Sweden and Belgium have also not yet implemented the Directive, but have provided a detailed timetable for when the relevant national laws will enter into force. (Collateral is assets (such as securities) provided by a borrower to a lender to minimise the risk of financial loss to the lender in the event of the borrower failing to meet in full their financial obligations to the lender. See Europe of 4 December.)
Accounting rules. The Commission has decided to refer Greece, France and Luxembourg to the European Court of Justice for failure to implement the 2001 “fair value” Directive (2001/65/EC) on accounting rules. These Member States failed to give a satisfactory reply to the reasoned opinions sent in July 2004. In addition, the European Commission has sent reasoned opinions asking Germany to write this Directive into national law and the United Kingdom to implement it in Gibraltar. Belgium, Ireland, the Netherlands and Finland - the other Member States who received reasoned opinions in July 2004 - have now implemented the Directive in national law or will do so in the near future. The Directive amends three existing Accounting Directives to align them with existing international standards on the valuation of financial instruments (introducing the notion of fair play, for example, for IAS 39). (See Europe of 20 November).
Recognition of professional qualifications. The European Commission has decided to refer Belgium, Germany, Greece, France and Austria to the Court as each of these Member States has informed the Commission of the adoption of only part of the set of national measures necessary to implement Directive 2001/19/EC on the mutual recognition of professional qualifications. The deadline for transposition expired two years ago. The directive makes it considerably easier to keep up to date the lists of national qualifications which can be recognised automatically in other Member States.