Press Release: Internal Market Scoreboard: Commission warns of slowdown in Member States’ efforts to implement legislation

After two years of improvement, efforts by Member States to improve the time it takes to write Internal Market legislation they have all agreed into national law have come to a standstill. According to the latest issue of the Single Market Scoreboard 13% of all Internal Market Directives (194 out of 1489) that had entered into force by 15 April 2000 had still not been implemented by all Member States.

Four countries - Greece, Portugal, France and Luxembourg - account for more than 40% of the delays. The gap between those countries that implement legislation the fastest and those with a record as the slowest is widening. The Commission has set Member States the objective of bringing the implementation deficit to below 1.5% by the end of the year. To date only Sweden, Spain and Finland have hit that target although Italy, Luxembourg, Belgium, Austria, United Kingdom and Spain have all improved their performance.

The Commission reports that it is clear from these figures that extra effort will be needed if Member States are to meet the challenge they set themselves at the Lisbon Council to speed up economic reform and establish a fully operational Internal Market. In particular, in terms of realising the potential of the information society, it is worrying to note that of the five Directives related to information society services, not one has been fully implemented across the EU.

http://ec.europa.eu/comm/internal_market/en/update/score/index.htm http://ec.europa.eu/comm/internal_market/en/update/score/index.htm

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