'Binnenmarkt'-Normen und Richtlinien

Im Juli 2004 veröffentlichte die Kommission ihren
Binnenmarktsanzeiger. Erstmals werden auch die zehn neuen
Mitgliedstaaten unter den folgenden Überschriften erfasst:
„Umsetzung der Richtlinien“ und „Annahme europäischer Normen“.
Unter den anderen Überschriften konnten aufgrund der kurzen
Mitgliedsdauer der neuen Mitgliedstaaten bislang keine
Informationen angegeben werden, heißt es in der Revue
Elargissement von MINEFI-DREE.

To check the correct implementation by the ten NMS of the
Internal Market Directives, the Commission was not able to use the
same method as for the members of the former EU15: the
directive-by-directive analysis and verification of the contents of
each national law implementing a directive – a procedure followed
for the 15 – would have been a too onerous task in the case of the
NMS, which have had to incorporate thousands of texts and Community
decisions into their national legislation in a very short period of
time. The scoreboard for them is therefore based on two criteria:
the number of notifications sent by the NMS to the Commission and
their own estimate of their implementation achievements.

The most virtuous country is Lithuania: it has notified its
national implementation and application measures for almost the
whole of the “acquis communautaire” relative to the Internal Market
(a 0.8 % default). In contrast, Malta is the country which is the
least advanced in this process: the implementation of 40.4% of the
Directives has not yet been notified.

The NMS’ appreciation of their own implementation efforts
corroborates these results, with two significant exceptions:
Slovakia and Poland. The latter considers that it has still to
implement 16.8% of the Directives, whereas its notifications
indicated that it had implemented almost all of them (3.9% having
not been notified). But the Commission’s classification criteria do
not take into account the quality of the implementation: these
countries probably consider that some of the implementations
notified are still unfinished.

The development of the Internal Market led to a very rapid
progression in the adoption of standards at European level. They
ensure an easier circulation of goods within the Domestic market by
exempting the producer from the obligation to obtain a specific
standard in each Member State. The candidate countries were able to
adopt the European standards before their accession; the results
are thus more significant than for the implementation of the
Directives:

The Czech Republic, Estonia and Slovakia have adopted almost all
the European standards, including the harmonised standards: these
three countries have the best score of all the 25 Member
States.

Cyprus is the least advanced Member State among the 25 (7,000
standards not implemented including approximately 1,300 harmonised
standards) followed by Latvia (4,500 and 800). Poland (4,200 and
300 respectively), Lithuania, Slovenia, Malta, and Hungary do as
well as most of the ex EU 15. From this initial analysis, it
appears that the NMS behave like the old members of the Union of
15: there are good pupils and not so good pupils. All in all,
however, their efforts to implement and apply the internal market
directives and to achieve European standardisation are outstanding,
if one takes into account their very recent accession to the
EU. 

To read more analyses from the same source, visit the MINEFI-DREE website.