Member states score better in applying EU market rules
Brussels has hailed member states for better implementation of EU internal market rules into their national legislation - but pointed out that governments more often than not apply EU rules wrongly.
Overall, the EU ended up with 1.6 percent of legislative leftovers in 2005, which is the lowest figure since monitoring began in 1997, according to the European Commission's internal market scoreboad published on Tuesday (21 February),
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"This is an excellent result," commented the EU internal market commissioner Charlie McCreevy.
"It shows that member states are ever more committed to making the single market work, which is crucial to the growth and jobs agenda," he added.
Lithuania, Denmark, Hungary, Finland, Poland and Sweden have been the best in implementing the EU rules.
The "new" member states are performing "substantially better" than "old" EU countries, according to the commission, which notes that seven of the eight member states scoring below the desired target of 98.5 percent implementation are from western Europe.
Italy and the Czech Republic feature among the worst performers, although the commission admits both countries have made "impressive progress" since the last scoreboard was published in July.
Portugal, Greece and Luxembourg remain at the bottom of the scorebaord.
Wrong interpretation
However, member states have also seen a higher number of infringement procedures against them for wrongly applying laws agreed at the EU level.
Over the past three years, only France, Belgium, Austria, Ireland and the Netherlands have seen a drop in such complaints.
"New" member states have shown a relatively high tendency to apply EU laws wrongly - with 18 infringement procedures currently in place against Poland, and 14 against Malta and the Czech Republic.
The absolute numbers are still lower than in the "old" EU states, due to their shorter membership periods in the bloc.
Overall, Italy has the highest number of infringment procedures pending - 157, followed by Spain (115) and France (113).