Activites

• 2004/03/18 Final act published in Official Journal
• 2003/06/03 Decision by Parliament, 1st reading/single reading
  • T5-0231/2003 summary

    The European Parliament adopted a resolution drafted by Diana WALLIS (ELDR, UK) on the Commission reports. It welcomed the improvements the Commission had announced to its administrative procedures with regard to infringements of Community law, and asked the Commission to keep complainants fully informed of the progress of their complaints. Short deadlines should be set for the pre-litigation phase of the procedure for breach. Furthermore, as a rule, the deadline for transposing directives should be clearly stated and should not be longer than two years. Parliament recalled that petitions forwarded by individuals to the Commission, the Ombudsman and Parliament's relevant committees enable the European Union to assess the way in which Community law is being implemented at national and European level. It asked the Commission, in future, to include in its annual reports on the monitoring of the application of Community law a chapter devoted to the petitions forwarded to it by Parliament's competent committees. Parliament went on to calls for increased cooperation between national parliaments and the European Parliament and their respective members, so as to aid and increase effective scrutiny of European matters at national level. Parliaments play a valuable role in monitoring the application of Community law, thus helping to strengthen the democratic legitimacy of the Union and bring it closer to the citizens. There will be enormous challenges that European lawmaking following enlargement. It will therefore be of even greater importance to establish clear political priorities and goals and, where possible, to simplify legislation, perhaps by greater use of framework directives, thus in turn facilitating the implementation process. Parliament welcomed initiatives to facilitate out-of-court settlement of disputes such as the European Extra-Judicial Network and the Financial Services Complaints Network. It asked the Commission to monitor the progress of these bodies and report its results to Parliament, as this process will constitute another helpful indicator of the application of Community law and access to justice. Finally, Parliament felt that coregulation and self-regulation would have an important role to play in regulating certain sectors of the economy. They must be subject to clearly defined condition. Both these instruments reduce the right to judicial review. There is a danger of thereby creating rules that are uncertain, less binding and less secure, that may result in artificial approximations and random transposition into national legislation. Any coregulation measure must be based on a legislative act adopted jointly by the Council and Parliament.�

• 2003/04/29 Vote in committee, 1st reading/single reading
  • A5-0147/2003
• 2001/10/22 Committee referral announced in Parliament, 1st reading/single reading
• 2001/07/16 Non-legislative basic document published
  • COM(2001)0309 summary

    PURPOSE: An evaluation and update on the application of Community law in 2000. CONTENT: This, the 18th Annual Report, presented to the European Parliament and Council assesses and evaluates the application of Community law in the year 2000. The application of Community law is key to the proper functioning, indeed the credibility of the European Union. The Report itself examines a number of fields in its bid to assess the true application of Community law. These are: - A statistical overview of the various stages involved in monitoring the application of Community law, comparing 1999 figures with those of 2000; - Examining improvements in the pre-litigation procedure; - Assessing progress in transposing Community Directives in the Member States; - Evaluating applications for derogations from harmonisation measures; - A geographical overview showing, by Member State, all the infringement procedures commenced or handled by the Commission during 2000; - An overview of the Commission's use of the penalty procedure of Article 228; - A situational report examining, sector by sector, the application of Community law. This is an exhaustive list of policy fields where EU law applies and includes for example, the pharmaceutical industry, motor vehicles, construction products etc. Concerning the statistical overview the Commission notes that there is a degree of stabilisation in the number of complaints registered by the Commission. Indeed, for the first time complaints have actually decreased. At the same time the Commission opened a far greater number of cases based on its own investigation. Out of the total of 896 own investigation proceedings, fifteen commenced on the basis of parliamentary questions. In terms of letters of formal notices being issued the figure was up by 22.51%. Concerning the number of reasoned opinions, numbers for 2000 were the same as those for 1999, namely - 460. The number of cases being referred to the Court of Justice is down slightly by 3.5%. Encouragingly, the speed with which cases are handled continued to rise in 2000. Improvements in the pre-litigation procedures have also been identified thanks in large part to the use of the Asmodée Directives, which set up databases collating data on infringements. An encouraging rise in Member States transposition of Directives was witnessed for the first time since 1992. By 31 December 2000 the Member States had, on average notified 96.59% of national measures needed to implement the Directives. In spite of a 3% rise in its transposition rate Greece lags behind, floundering at the bottom of the table with Denmark positioning itself right on top. Interestingly, Belgium has jumped from ninth place to third having successfully pushed through a number of transpositions. Indeed, Belgium remains the a shining example to others seeing the number of infringement proceeding against it drop by 34.48%. France, Italy and Greece, as was the case for 1999, head the list of countries with the most infringementproceedings taken against them. In terms of applications for derogation from harmonisation measures, permitted under Article 95 of the EC Treaty, only Belgium lodged a notification which sought to limit the marketing and use of organotin compounds. This request was denied. Regarding the application of Article 228 a number of developments have been taking place. Firstly, three cases have been referred by the Commission to the Court of Justice - against Germany, Italy and the United Kingdom. Additionally, in 2000 the Court ordered Greece to pay a penalty payment of EUR 20 000 per day for failure to discharge its obligation of taking necessary measures for the elimination of toxic and dangerous waste. On the date of submitting the Report, Greece had paid a fine of EUR 1 760 000 in line with the penalty but had not taken measures to close the toxic site.�

  • DG [{'url': 'http://ec.europa.eu/dgs/secretariat_general/index_en.htm', 'title': 'Secretariat-General'}],

Documents

• Non-legislative basic document published: COM(2001)0309
• Committee report tabled for plenary, single reading: A5-0147/2003
• Decision by Parliament, 1st reading/single reading: T5-0231/2003

History

(these mark the time of scraping, not the official date of the change)