Internal Market Legislation Implementation Reaches Record Levels

by Ulrika Lomas, for LawAndTax-News.com, Brussels

23 February 2006

The European Commission revealed on Tuesday that EU member states have made their best ever progress in implementing agreed Internal Market rules into national law.

According to the latest Internal Market Scoreboard, on average, only 1.6% of Internal Market Directives for which the implementation deadline has passed are not currently written into national law.

This is down from 1.9% in July 2005, and is very close to the 1.5% interim target agreed by Heads of State.

The EC revealed that individual progress has been made by 'old' and 'new' Member States alike, but overall 'new' Member States, with an average deficit of 1.2%, are performing substantially better than 'old' Member States.

However, the Commission went on to explain that often, member states are failing to apply Internal Market rules correctly, as demonstrated by the fact that only five Member States have managed to reduce the number of infringement proceedings against them.

Internal Market and Services Commissioner Charlie McCreevy announced that:

"This is an excellent result. It shows that Member States are ever more committed to making the single market work, which is crucial to the growth and jobs agenda. I encourage Member States to build on this progress and urge those who are still lagging behind to redouble their efforts. By the next Scoreboard I hope to be congratulating everyone on breaking the 1.5% barrier."

Key findings of the Internal Market Scoreboard include:

• 17 Member States have reached the 1.5% target. Once again, Lithuania has the lowest deficit, followed by Denmark, Hungary, Finland, Poland and Sweden;
• 3 Member States are close to reaching the 1.5% target: France, Belgium and Ireland;
• The Czech Republic and Italy are still some way off the target but, importantly, these Member States have made "impressive progress" since the last Scoreboard;
• Portugal has a long way to go and progress over the last 6 months has been modest;
• The deficits of Luxembourg and Greece have increased compared to 6 months ago; and
• Although individual progress is evenly divided between 'old' and 'new' Member States, the excellent result is largely due to the efforts pursued by the 'new' Member States. The transposition deficit for 'new' Member States is 1.2%, compared to 1.9% for 'old' Member States. Of the 8 Member States not having reached the 1.5% target, 7 are 'old' Member States.

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