Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2001-09-03-Speech-1-121"
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"en.20010903.8.1-121"2
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"Mr President, the application of Community law is the cause of an ever-growing number of problems, for according to the Commission’s own report, it has opened 2270 files on this subject since 1999, compared with just 124 in 1978. This rapid increase is caused on the one hand by the constant proliferation of Community Law, and on the other hand, from the increased severity of a Commission that has at its disposal, since the adoption of the Maastricht Treaty, effective instruments of oppression, notably Articles 226 and 228 of the EC Treaty. The report we are debating today in the European Parliament adds further to this sense of repression, for it urges the Commission to use these articles more than ever before, to threaten Member States with fines or penalties to a greater extent, and even to propose a new system of automatic sanctions applicable to those who do not transpose Community directives quickly or sufficiently enough.
So why do Member States, who are supposed to have accepted the Council’s directives, drag their feet when it comes to applying them? This is the big question everybody seems to avoid. As far as I am concerned there are three answers. Firstly, a bizarre side effect of the extension of qualified majority voting causes institutions to have what I will call a type of regulatory illusion. We think that because we have voted by a majority in the Council, everything is solved. In reality, however, if members of the minority have good enough reasons and if application does not follow through on ground level, nothing is solved. And to redress the balance, we launch Europe into a downwards spiral of repression that better consensus at the start would have prevented.
Second cause of non-application: the unsuitability of certain parts of Community Law, such as the 1979 Directive on the conservation of wild birds, toughened further by the Court of Justice behind the back even of the Council. In a case such as this, which, take note, is from a unanimously adopted directive, what is lacking is the opportunity for an automatic revision to be made after a ten year period, at the request of a single Member State.
Finally, the third cause of non-application: certain directives are still not transposed or are badly transposed because the governmental representatives sitting on the Council wanted to turn over a new leaf in relation to Europe by closing their eyes to future difficulties that they of course knew would be inevitable. This is for example what has taken place in France with Directive 98/44 on the patentability of living matter, which now proves to be non-transposable because it is contrary to several essential parts of our own law. This is, alas, the usual behaviour of French leaders, up to the highest level. Nowadays, we agree to sign such and such a European text, not daring to raise objections, and tomorrow we will have to deal with their application. It is precisely this that has just taken place with the Treaty of Nice, and France will have a high price to pay."@en1
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