Germany looks for better transposition of internal market laws

The German presidency wants member states to improve their performance in adopting single market legislation by increasing the target to 99% of EU laws.

Last week European Internal Market Commissioner Charlie McCreevy announced that member states had achieved their best ever result in transposing EU single market rules with an average for the EU27 of 98.8% compared to the 98.5% target.

McCreevy said he would "strongly support" Germany’s initiative.

The commissioner confirmed that President José Manuel Barroso would launch a review of the single market, expected on 21 February. Barroso would present a "vision document" to EU leaders at the spring summit on 8-9 March with some initial ideas. Then all Commission departments would contribute their thoughts by October this year. Following this, the Commission would present to government leaders a paper on how to take the single market forward, including steps for concrete actions, at the spring 2008 summit.

The report is expected to focus on existing gaps in the internal market. A recent consultation of interested parties carried out by the Commission highlighted that the single market was not working for services, retail financial services, insurance, transport, energy, taxation, free circulation of workers and intellectual property. Many participants in the consultation said that setting up a common intellectual property protection system for the EU was a priority.

Contributors also called on the Commission to address problems of poor transposition, implementation and application by member states.

McCreevy urged the Commission to prioritise and streamline infringement procedures which were taking on average 26 months to conclude. "We should prioritise and deal with infringement procedures more quickly and make sure we do the important ones as quickly as possible," he said.

The German presidency wants member states to improve their performance in adopting single market legislation by increasing the target to 99% of EU laws.