McCreevy Offers Qualified Praise To EU Member States Over Transposition Of Internal Market Laws

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

20 July 2005

In a statement released on Monday, Europe's Internal Market Commissioner, Charlie McCreevy praised member states for improving their results in terms of transposing EC internal market directives into national law, but cautioned that there is still room for improvement.

According to European Commission figures released this week, the 'transposition deficit' (or number of directives not yet implemented nationally) stood at an average level of 1.9%, a substantial reduction on last year's 7.1%.

Of the EU25, the ten new member states reportedly performed better than their older counterparts, with Lithuania, Hungary and Slovenia leading the pack with a 0.7% transposition deficit each. Of the older EU members, Denmark, Finland and Germany reportedly performed best, with deficits of 0.8% for Denmark and Finland, and 1.4% for Germany.

Speaking with regard to the newly released figures, Mr McCreevy announced that:

“I congratulate Member States on this impressive achievement. Nevertheless, there is still much to do in certain areas: despite 11 Member States having reached the target of 1.5% transposition deficit and another 5 being very close, 9 Member States have still not reached the target, and I encourage them to redouble their efforts. However, I don’t want to detract from the overall result of this Scoreboard - I am delighted with it and hope this trend continues.”

Recommended