According to the European Commission’s latest Internal Market Scoreboard, Member States continue to perform well in implementing agreed Internal Market rules into national law on time. On average only 1.0% of Internal Market Directives for which the implementation deadline has passed are not currently written into national law, which means that most Member States remain in line with the new 1.0% target agreed by Heads of State.

This current Internal Market Scoreboard both presents the degree of economic integration achieved - illustrating that there is considerable scope for further integration if and when existing barriers are eliminated - and analyses how well Member States apply Internal Market rules in practice. Seventeen Member States are on target, with Denmark and Malta jointly achieving the best result. In total 14 Member States achieved or equalled their best result so far. However this is not the end of the story.

Things are less satisfactory in relation to the practical application of Internal Market rules: figures show that the average number of cases of misapplication has risen to 49 per Member State and that these cases take too long to resolve. To solve their problems in the Internal Market, citizens and businesses are increasingly turning to the EU's problem-solving and advice services rather than formal complaint procedures, as shown by the SOLVIT and Citizens Signpost Service (CSS) annual reports.

The three reports – Scoreboard, SOLVIT and CSS – are now being issued as a package highlighting the close links between implementation of legislation and practical problem-solving in the Internal Market.

Implementation of Internal Market Directives

• At 1.0%, the average transposition deficit (i.e., the percentage of Internal Market Directives that have not been implemented into national law in time) of the 27 Member States again matches the new target deficit to be achieved by 2009. However, this still means that 92 Internal Market directives have not been transposed on time into national law. Among those 92 directives there are 22 where the transposition deadline expired already more than 2 years ago.
• 14 Member States have achieved or equalled their best score so far: Denmark, Malta, Slovenia, the Netherlands, Romania, Slovakia, Latvia, Hungary, Finland, France, Austria, Ireland, Czech Republic and Portugal.
• Denmark and Malta (0.3%) share the first place, being only 5 directives away from a zero deficit.
• The Czech Republic has made the most spectacular progress reducing the deficit by 1.1%, bringing it down to 1.4%.
• On the other hand– Cyprus, Greece, Portugal, Poland and Luxembourg – have failed to reach the 1.5% target.
• Luxembourg's and Poland's deficit is double the EU average transposition deficit.

As regards to the Infringements cases, the results show that:

• Italy and Spain account for most of the open infringement cases. Nevertheless, Italy managed the highest reduction in open infringement procedures (15), followed by France (9), Spain and Malta (5). On the other hand, Belgium and Slovakia have increased further their stock of cases with respectively 14 and 11 new proceedings opened.
• Out of the 5 worst performing Member States in terms of timely transposition (Cyprus, Greece, Portugal, Poland and Luxembourg), 3 (Greece, Portugal, Poland) have also increased their number of infringement proceedings.

The Scoreboard's new chapter on the state of economic integration of the Internal Market demonstrates that enlargement can be seen as the major driver for further integration within the Internal Market, with most of the EU-10 Member States being very open to imports and direct investment from other Member States. Across all Member States, intra-EU trade in goods is much more developed (accounting for 16.9% of GDP in 2007) than intra-EU trade in services (5% of GDP), which indicates considerable potential for further integration.

SOLVIT and CSS

In 2008, SOLVIT case flow grew by a further 22% to 1,000 cases, while resolution rates remained high at 83%. Cases took on average just two months to resolve. The cost savings as a result of solving problems for citizens and businesses through SOLVIT were estimated at EUR 32.6 million in 2008 (applicable to 25% of all resolved cases and based on the cost of not solving the problem).

The Citizens Signpost Service (CSS), which offers citizens free personalised legal advice and 'signposting' to where further assistance is available, answered about 11,000 enquiries during 2008 and well over 90% of cases received replies within three working days.

The analysis of CSS enquiries and SOLVIT cases provide a direct link to the difficulties citizens and businesses are experiencing and help to identify issues which may still need to be resolved in order to improve the operation of the Internal Market.

In 2008 both services received a high number of requests in the areas of social security, professional qualifications and free movement of persons. Also, it is noticeable that late transposition or ineffective application of certain Internal Market rules tends to lead to an increase in the number of cases submitted to these services, for example in the areas of residence rights and professional qualifications.