Press Release: Internal Market: Commission acts to ensure 13 Member States implement EU laws

The European Commission on 3 August 2005 decided to pursue infringement procedures against 13 Member States for failure to implement in national law one or more of eight different Internal Market Directives. The Commission was planning to ask Belgium, Czech Republic, Estonia, Greece, Italy, Latvia, Luxembourg, Netherlands, Portugal, Slovakia, Spain, Sweden and the United Kingdom to implement quickly the necessary legislation in a total of 25 cases covering Directives on supplementary supervision of financial conglomerates, reorganisation and winding up of credit institutions, activity of e-money institutions, accounting rules, winding up of insurance services, life assurance, postal services and conditional access services. These requests took the form of 'reasoned opinions', the second stage of the infringement procedure laid down in Article 226 of the EC Treaty.