Press Release: Internal Market Scoreboard: Member States post best-ever result but action still needed on practical application of rules

Member States have never performed better in writing agreed Internal Market rules into national law on time, but still need to improve the way those rules are applied in practice, according to the European Commission’s latest Internal Market Scoreboard. On average 0.7% of Internal Market Directives for which the implementation deadline has passed are not currently written into national law, down from 1.0% in July 2009. This means that Member States are well below the 1.0% target agreed by Heads of State, which was to be achieved by 2009 at the latest. Twenty Member States are either at or below the target, while Lithuania and Malta were overall the best performers, being three Directives away from a perfect score. This is the third time that Malta has been in first position. Sixteen Member States achieved their best result so far. However, seven Member States – Austria, the Czech Republic, Italy, Poland, Portugal, Luxembourg and Greece – are still above the target and hindering further reduction of the deficit. As regards application of EU law, there has been a slight reduction in the number of infringement cases, but the duration of the proceedings remains too long and Member States take on average 18 months to comply with Court of Justice rulings despite the legal obligation to take immediate action.