The European Commission has decided to pursue infringement procedures against several Member States for failure to implement certain Internal Market Directives into national law. These procedures involve a Directive on Statutory Audit, the Eligible Assets Directive, and a Directive on public procurement.

Statutory Audit Directive

The Commission has decided to send sixteen reasoned opinions to Member States, namely Austria, Belgium, Cyprus, Czech Republic, Germany, Estonia, France, Ireland, Italy, Latvia, Luxemburg, Malta, Poland, Spain, Sweden and the United Kingdom (regarding the territory of Gibraltar), for failure to notify the Commission all their measures fully transposing Directive 2006/43/EC on statutory audits of annual accounts and consolidated accounts.

The Directive overhauled regulation of the audit profession to increase the quality of audits in Europe after corporate scandals in the past. In particular, it introduced a requirement for each Member State to establish an external quality assurance system and a public oversight system of the audit profession and provided for measures to improve co-operation between regulatory authorities in the EU. The Directive also set out a number of ethical principles to ensure the independence and objectivity of statutory auditors and clarified their duties.

The deadline for transposition of Directive 2006/43/EC expired on June, 29th, 2008.

Eligible Assets Directive

The Commission has decided to send reasoned opinions to the Czech Republic, Greece, Italy and Portugal as they have failed to communicate to the Commission appropriate measures undertaken to comply with the Eligible Assets Directive (Commission Directive 2007/16/EC).

The implementation of this Directive would help fund managers and market authorities to reconcile financial innovations with the principles of the UCITS (undertakings for collective investment in transferable securities) Directive. This piece of legislation promotes common understanding of definitions of certain financial instruments. Its efficient implementation is crucial for proper functioning of the UCITS passport mechanism.

Public procurement

The Commission has decided, under Article 228 of the EC Treaty, to send a letter of formal notice to Luxembourg requesting it to comply immediately with the judgement of the European Court of Justice in the case C-272/07. The Court stated in this judgement that Luxembourg had not transposed Directive 2004/18/EC on public procurement, and, by doing so, failed to comply with its obligations under the EC law.

The deadline for transposition of the Directive expired on January, 31st, 2006. To date, the Commission has still not received any implementing measures from the Luxembourg authorities.