The European Commission published the Internal Market Scoreboard that shows how the EU average transposition deficit – the percentage of Internal Market Directives that have not been transposed into national law in time – has decreased from 6.3% in 1997 to a record new level of 0.6%.

The Internal Market Scoreboard published by the European Commission highlights that the EU average transposition deficit – the percentage of Internal Market Directives that have not been transposed into national law in time – has decreased from 6.3% in 1997 to a record new level of 0.6%, i.e. below the 1% target agreed by the European Heads of State and Government in 2007 and close to the 0.5% deficit proposed in the Single Market Act in April 2011.

In addition, the Scoreboard shows that compared to November 2007, the number of open infringements is down by 38%. Italy accounts for the highest number of infringement proceedings launched by the Commission, followed by Spain and Greece. The majority of cases continue to be mainly in the areas of taxation and the environment. In this edition, the best performers are Ireland, Malta, Estonia and Sweden, who managed to implement into their national legislation the highest number of directives. When all enforcement indicators are taken into account, Romania, Estonia, Cyprus, the Czech Republic and Lithuania are the best overall performers.

According to the Commission, after the Court of Justice establishes a breach of EU legislation, Member States are required to take immediate action to comply with its ruling. Nevertheless, a lot of cases take considerable time – on average more than 17.4 months – to be resolved. For Spain, Ireland and France the period is almost two years. The Communication on Better Governance for the Single Market, calls on Member States to speed up the process for complying with judgments of the Court of Justice in the identified key sectors, i.e. achieving full compliance within 12 months on average.