Compared to the 10 new EU members, Malta is the worst offender with 617 directives that still have to be transposed.
The figures are based on the number of notifications made by member countries to the European Commission.
The scoreboard notes that there are big disparities among the EU-10 member states in transposing internal market directives. Some, such as Lithuania and Slovenia, have already notified national implementing laws for the vast majority of internal market directives. However, others such as Malta, Slovakia and the Czech Republic still have much to do, the scoreboard says.
The number of national implementing laws notified so far by the EU-10 member states does, however, provide a first indication of the state of transposition in each EU-10 member state.
The scoreboard shows Malta has 617 or (40.6 per cent) directives still waiting to be written into national law. The Czech Republic, Latvia and Cyprus are also lagging behind with 360, 290 and 276 directives pending. At the other end of the scale, Lithuania has only 12 directives on its waiting list while Poland and Slovenia have less than 100, 60 and 87 directives respectively.
According to the scoreboard, the information on notifications may overstate the transposition records of EU-10 member states to the extent that some of the national legislation notified may only partially transpose directives. At the same time, it may under-state their records where national implementing measures have been adopted but have not yet been notified to the Commission. However, it added that even when taking a conservative look at the figures, it remains the case that Malta still has over 275 directives that have not been transposed.
One graph showing members’ admission of having a backlog does not carry a figure for Malta. “Malta made no declaration as to the number of directives it has not transposed,” the scoreboard states.
The Commission said the delays in the transposition of the directives affected the EU’s progress towards becoming a fully functioning single market and the internal market index shows that progress has slowed since 2000.
Two of the principal factors behind this are the stagnation in intra-EU trade and in intra-EU foreign direct investment.
A price survey carried out by the Commission provides a mixed picture on the state of price convergence in the internal market, with the prices of some goods converging while the prices of others diverge. Prices for some well known brands (such as Coca Cola and Snickers) varied more in 2003 than in 2001, while prices of other well-known brands (such as Twix, Uncle Ben’s rice and Gillette disposable razors) converged. No discernible pattern in price convergence of non-branded goods was detected over this period.
The so-called “transposition deficit” – the average percentage, per member state, of internal market directives that have not been written into national law – is now 2.2 per cent for the EU-15 member states. This has not changed since January.
France has the worst record of the EU-15 member states with 62 directives pending followed by Greece, Germany, Italy and the Benelux countries with more than 30 directives each.
A total of 134, or nine per cent, of internal market directives have not been transposed into EU-15 national law on time, in some cases more than two years overdue.
Infringement cases also remained at the same level they were a year ago, with Italy facing the most cases for applying the rules incorrectly, closely followed by France and Spain, each with more than 100 cases. The UK stands at the other end of the scale with just 24 cases.