Press Release: Internal Market Scoreboard/SOLVIT and CSS annual reports: Member States maintain high rate of implementation but more action required on practical application of rules

Member States continued to perform well in implementing agreed Internal Market rules into national law on time, according to the European Commission’s latest Internal Market Scoreboard. On average only 1.0% of Internal Market Directives for which the implementation deadline has passed were not currently written into national law. This means that most Member States remain in line with the new 1.0% target agreed by Heads of State. Seventeen Member States are on target, with Denmark and Malta jointly achieving the best result. In total 14 Member States achieved or equalled their best result so far. However this is not the end of the story. This current Scoreboard both presents the degree of economic integration achieved - illustrating that there is considerable scope for further integration if and when existing barriers are eliminated - and analyses how well Member States apply Internal Market rules in practice. Here, things are less satisfactory: figures show that the average number of cases of misapplication has risen to 49 per Member State and that these cases take too long to resolve. To solve their problems in the Internal Market, citizens and businesses are increasingly turning to the EU's problem-solving and advice services rather than formal complaint procedures, as shown by the SOLVIT and Citizens Signpost Service (CSS) annual reports.