Brussels, 17/07/2009 (Agence Europe) - On Thursday 16 July 2009, the European Commission published a six-monthly review of the transposition of EU single market legislation into member states' domestic legislation (see EUROPE 9844), showing mixed results. Eighteen member states have met the target of being late in transposing no more than 1% of EU directives, keeping the EU late transposition average at below 1% for the third year in a row. Adding the badly transposed legislation, however, one finds that only five member states (Bulgaria, Denmark, Finland, Latvia, Malta and Romania) meet the 1% target. A further concern for the European Commission is that face that six member states (Estonia, Greece, Italy, Poland, Portugal and the Czech Republic), which were already late in transposing more than 1% of legislation, have lagged further behind over the past six months. In addition, some 22% of EU directives are more than two years late in being transposed (like Luxembourg with the public tender directives). In total, 12 member states are failing to keep their promise of not allowing the transposition of any directives to be more than two years late. The Commission calculates that 6% (in other words a hundred directives) of internal market directives are not applied across the entire European Union, leading therefore to segmentation of the single market. Since 2004, Italy has been top of the league of countries against which EU infringement proceedings have been launched (110 cases), but it is also the member state that has made the greatest improvement in the number of outstanding cases over the past six months. The greatest increase in infringement proceedings has been observed in Slovakia, Estonia and Belgium. Some five member states (Belgium, Spain, France, Greece and Italy) alone account for nearly 40% of current infringement proceedings. Taxation and customs (23% of the total) and the environment are the main areas where there is the greatest disregard for EU internal market legislation.
The European Commission's league table includes a special section on public tender. The Commission says that the use of negotiated (simplified) public tender procedures has almost doubled since the European Council at the end of 2008 encouraged the use of this type of procedure until 31 December 2010 to help stimulate the economy. From 1 January 2009 to 31 May 2009, 1,321 public contracts were noted above the EU threshold, compared with 755 cases in the same period of 2008. This increase is mainly due to Romania and Bulgaria. Less than 2% of public contracts are granted to companies or individuals from another country, but this figure rises to 10% for the supply of energy services and the supply of optical and precision equipment. (M.B./transl.fl)