Implementatie EU-richtlijnen laat te wensen over (en)

EUOBSERVER / BRUSSELS - The European Commission has found itself once again berating several member states for not putting EU internal market law into effect.

Releasing figures yesterday (12 January) in an attempt to 'shame' EU governments into doing better, Internal Market Commissioner Frits Bolkestein said that it "is disappointing that some Member States appear to consider that it is acceptable to regularly implement Directives late and to incorrectly apply commonly agreed rules".

The statistics revealed an interesting fault-line between well-behaved and misbehaving states.

Four of the EU founding members and those who have been at the forefront pushing for a core Europe - Germany, France, Luxembourg and Belgium - are the worst at implementing internal market law, which represent around 80% of all EU laws.

Similarly Italy, also a founding EU member state, has almost as many infringement cases against it as Denmark, Sweden, Finland, Luxembourg and Portugal combined.

By contrast Denmark and the UK, generally considered to be more eurosceptic, are at the top of the class.

Just five member states are meeting the Gothenburg European Council target (June, 2001) of reducing their deficit in meeting implementation deadlines to 1.5 per cent of the over 1,500 directives - the UK (1.4%), Denmark (0.3%), Ireland (1.4%), Spain (0.9%) and Finland (1.4%).

Ireland, which quickly improved its act before taking over the EU Presidency on 1 January, was signalled out for particular praise.

"Ireland's halving of its implementation deficit in only eight months shows what can be done when there is political will and commitment", said Mr Bolkestein.

"Belgium, France, Germany, Luxembourg, Greece and Italy simply need to do a lot better" he added.