Brussels, 02/07/2007 (Agence Europe) - On Monday 2 July, the European Commission published its latest six-monthly Internal Market Scoreboard analysing the efforts made by member states for writing European directives into national law. By 10 May 2007, the average percentage of internal market directives for which the implementation deadline had passed, but which were not written into national law was 1.6% for the EU25, said Marc Vereecken, an official within the Commission's internal market services. This figure is up compared to the last financial period which had the best results ever (1.2%), he acknowledged. However, in his view, there is “no need for concern”, mainly because there will be fewer directives to be transposed over the next six months (see EUROPE 9357).
Nine member states have already kept within the deficit allowed or done better than the new transposition deficit targets fixed at 1% by the Spring European Council (see EUROPE 9383): - Lithuania (0.5%), Latvia (0.7%), Slovakia and Denmark (0.9%), Germany, Cyprus, Estonia, Malta and Slovenia (1%). France has notched up its best result ever with 1.2%. Only 16 out of 25 member states have remained below the ceiling of a 1.5% transposition deficit compared to one year earlier. Member states that have again gone beyond the 1.5% mark are Ireland, Poland and Spain. The worst performances were for Portugal with a deficit of 4.4%, which corresponds to 71 directives still not transposed, followed by Luxembourg (3.3%) and Italy (2.7%). In terms of delay, the average transposition delay is eight months.
The Commission notes that the sector with the most infringement proceedings is the environment. This, as Mr Vereecken pointed out, is despite the political priority given to combating climate change. The environment represents 21% of infringement cases underway, i.e. 278 proceedings. After the environment come: - taxation and customs union (16%), energy and transport (12%), employment (11%), and public procurement (7%). In this category, the best pupils are Slovenia and Lithuania with only 17 infringement proceedings still open against them. Bringing up the rear are Italy (153 cases), Spain (108) and France (99). According to Mr Vereecken, the average time for resolving infringement proceedings is 26 months, with Italy needing another 10 months.
Mr Vereecken also spoke of the out of court measures taken by the Commission to improve the transposition and implementation of European legislation on the internal market. Between July 2005 and July 2006, 16 special meetings (“package meetings”) were organised in member states to specifically tackle the procedures underway, initiatives that allowed dispute settlement to be speeded up. SOLVIT, the network for dispute settlement linked to implementation of internal market legislation, has seen a rise in the number of complaints filed. The Commission nonetheless regrets the lack of human resources allocated by member states to national points of contact in the network. (mb)