McCreevy Slams EU Member States Over Implementation Of Internal Market Laws

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

20 July 2006

According to the European Commission’s latest Internal Market Scoreboard, member states need to speed up their efforts to implement Internal Market rules into national law.

The newly published scoreboard revealed that on average, 1.9% of Internal Market Directives for which the implementation deadline has passed are not currently implemented into national law, which is an increase of 0.3% on the best-ever result of 1.6%, achieved in November 2005.

This means that the positive trend of recent years has stalled and the interim target deficit of 1.5% agreed by Heads of State has not been reached.

Speaking with regard to the results on Tuesday, Internal Market Commissioner, Charlie McCreevy announced that:

"In February I congratulated Member States on posting their best result ever in putting Internal Market laws into action. I was hoping to be able to congratulate them again today on an even better result."

"But I'm disappointed to have to report that Member States' efforts have stalled in the meantime. Our latest Scoreboard shows that the overall proportion of Internal Market laws which should by now have been written into national law, but have not been, has actually risen – up to 1.9% from 1.6%."

"Member States have missed a golden opportunity to break through the 1.5% interim target deficit set by Heads of State. Instead of going the extra mile, they have relaxed their efforts and moved further away."

He went on to add that:

"The performance of the 'new' Member States was particularly disappointing. Not in absolute terms, but compared to the progress they have made over the past two years. I hope this is a temporary blip and they can get back on track very soon."

"Delving further into the figures, only 14 out of 25 Member States remain below the 1.5% ceiling, compared to 17 last time round. Besides Denmark, only Cyprus, Austria and the UK have improved on their transposition figures from six months ago, whereas 19 Member States have actually increased their backlog. So more effort is needed almost across the board."

The Internal Market Commissioner concluded:

"I urge Member States to rediscover the eagerness that they were showing only six months ago. Implementing the backlog will reduce red tape across the EU, make for an even stronger internal market and ultimately help to deliver more jobs and growth in Europe."

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