Brussels, 20/02/2008 (Agence Europe) - On Wednesday 20 February the European Parliament debated the application of Community law in the member states. Some MEPs expressed concerned that the number of infringement procedures involving European legislation had not increased with accession in 2004 of the ten countries from central and eastern Europe. The own-initiative report by Monica Frassoni (Greens/EFA, Italy) on the control and application of Community law will be adopted on Thursday 21 February by the EP.
Manuel Medina (PES, Spain) declared that, “we get the impression that the Commission is applying less rigorous criteria than those applied in the older member states” when it came to controlling application of Community law. He said that at the Commission there were only two or three officials involved in implementation of European legislation on the environment in the ten new member states. According to the Frassoni report, the total number of infringement procedures started by the Commission had constantly increased over recent years with 2709 breaches in 2003 in the EU15, a spectacular fall in 2004 (563 procedures) but which rose again in 2005 to 2653 infringements in the EU15.
Günter Verheugen, the European Commissioner for enterprise and industry explained, “the Commission sees to reasons for this situation”. He said that thanks to the, “quality of the last Commission's work…new member states were very well prepared for the Community acquis and their accession and they applied a very high rate of acquis”. Between 2000-2004, Verheugen was Commissioner for enlargement. The Commissioner said that new citizens also had to learn that they had the right to make complaints. Janez Lenarcic, the Slovenian minister of European affairs followed Verheugen's line: these ten countries had become member of the EU after a long period transposing Community law into internal law, a situation that contributed to minimising the problems. He stressed that enlargement had not meant a lack of rigour from the Commission towards new member states.
The Frassoni report takes a position on the new work method the Commission wants to implement in order to give priority treatment to some infringement procedures and speed up managing existing procedures. It is deeply concerned that as part of this new working method, complaints received by the Commission will be directly send to the member states when complaints require clarifications from the competent national authorities, “Sending the case to the member states concerned…the new working method risks leading to the Commission abdicating its institutional responsibility as guardian of the treaties”, warns the report. The rapporteur says that there is a lot of concern about this point. She promised that the EP would be paying attention to this question. Verheugen explained that the new working method allowed for information to be obtained when deciding whether an infringement procedure ought to be launched. He added that, “if from the outset there is a clear breach” in Community law, a procedure would be rapidly launched.
The European Commission wants to test the new methodology for managing Community law infringement procedures in 2008 via a pilot study. Verheugen indicated that fifteen member states were involved in this. Diana Wallis (ADLE, United Kingdom) said that she supported the project but was rather sceptical about the large number of member states involved in it.
During the debate, Lidia Joanna Geringer de Oedenberg (PES, Poland) highlighted the importance of getting Article 228 of the European treaty respected. This article establishes an accelerated procedure obliging a member state to comply with a Court ruling and including sanctions if a second Court ruling goes against the offending member state. Bert Doorn (EPP-ED, Netherlands) noted that Commissioner Verheugen wanted the Commission to use the regulation more instead of the directive, in order to avoid difficulties in different transposition of European legislation. According to Tadeusz Zwiefka (EPP-ED, Poland) the problem is the length of the infringement procedure which could last 20 months. Jens-Peter Bonde(ID, Denmark) strongly denounced committee procedures that no-one could understand or explain and which reduced voters' rights when negotiations were between ministers and lobbyists, increasingly resembling a Mussolini kind of EU system. The Lisbon treaty will increase this situation, he exclaimed. (M.B)