Member States do better in the objectives towards a real Single Market
Although all Member states are currently experiencing difficult situations due to the economic crisis, the new Internal Market Scoreboard shows that most Member States are effectively transposing internal market provisions into national law. According to the Scoreboard, most Member states are meeting the target set by Heads of State and Government about the amount Internal Market Directives for which the implementation deadline has passed, which stands at 0.9%.
The amount of Internal Market Directives for which the implementation deadline has passed and have not been dully transposed into national law, has remained stable over the past six months, remaining at 0.9%. Although very slightly, this level of implementation is within the 1.0% target set by Heads of State and Government in 2007. More precisely, in the last Internal Market Scoreboard, the total number of Member States achieving this 0.1% transposition deficit target increased from 18 to 20 Member States.
Among these 20 Member States, 6 of them managed to achieve the target or even improve it in relation to the results presented six months before. These countries are Malta, Ireland, Portugal, Greece, Luxembourg and Latvia. Greece, Portugal and Luxembourg are those which have made a major improvement, having notably reduced their backlog, while Malta continues to be the overall best performer.
By contrast, 7 Member States are above the 1% transposition target, i.e. Austria, Czech Republic, Estonia, Cyprus, Hungary, Poland and Italy. Furthermore, in relation to the results of Commission's Internal Market Scoreboard from September 2010, Italy has doubled its deficit from 1.1% up to 2.1% and has now the highest transposition deficit of all 27 Member States.
On Internal Market Directives, appropriate transposition and implementation also matter
The Internal Market Enforcement Table provides an overview of Member States' compliance with the implementation and application of Internal Market law, which includes not only considerations about rules to be effective and timely transposed, but also considerations which show whether they are correctly transposed and properly applied. The table highlights that only a small number of Member States perform better than the EU average when various enforcement indicators are taken into account. In this context, Malta is the overall best performer.
Regarding infringements procedures, the overall number of proceedings relating to the Internal Market decreased by 11% compared to the previous Scoreboard. Besides, in recent years, the European Commission has introduced a number of alternative problem solving and complaints handling mechanisms, which have had a considerable influence on the decrease. Nevertheless, taxation and environment still remain the biggest areas of infringements.
Today the EU average number of open infringement proceedings is 40 cases per Member State compared to 46 cases half a year ago. Belgium continues to account for the highest number of infringement proceedings, followed by Greece and Italy.