Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2001-09-03-Speech-1-124"
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"en.20010903.8.1-124"2
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". – The report on monitoring the application of Community law that is before the House today is the seventeenth that has been produced in response to the request originally made by this House in a resolution in 1983. These reports give, as the House knows, an annual record of the work of the Commission in discharging one of the most vital parts of its role as guardian of the Treaties by taking action against infringements under Article 226 of the Treaty. It is obviously right for the House to scrutinise these activities. The Commission is gratified by the fact that Parliament has given a warm welcome to this latest report and grateful also to Mr Koukiadis and his colleagues for their work.
The main reasons for that are as follows. Firstly, the overall volume of complaints and of cases handled is actually stable. The number of complainants registered even dropped slightly in 2000. Secondly, account must be taken of successive Community enlargements and the expansion of Community law, particularly in connection with the Community's wider powers and the growing public and business awareness of Community law. These are all factors that affect the number of infringements handled by the Commission and on that basis the increase in the absolute number of cases handled is a positive development rather than something that should cause disquiet. As Mr Koukiadis states in his report, it is important that every effort should be made to get to the root of infringements and find ways of reducing their number without relying exclusively on the standard infringement procedure.
As regards the interpretation of statistics in the annual report, the scope for interpreting the figures is still restricted because of the many causes of infringements, the Commission's great dependence on complaints and the political dimension of the work arising from the fact that proceedings are at the Commission's discretion. The Commission is in a position to determine an order of priority for proceedings by reference to, firstly, the perceived damage to the Community legal order, secondly the perceived damage to the interest protected by the rule that has been breached, thirdly the recurrent nature of certain infringements which are the subject of individual or collective complaints and fourthly the harm caused to Community's financial interests. In addition, topical events in any given area of the Community law can also trigger an increase in complaints to the Commission and cause the Commission to step up its action to satisfy the needs of the political agenda. The various stages in the completion of the single market were a good example of that. The increasing awareness of the possibility of infringement of environmental law is another instance. All of these points are of course made in very clear terms in the White Paper, which is, as some Members have reminded us, to be considered in this House tomorrow. It must be borne in mind that the national courts are the first guardians of the Community legal order and therefore the Commission deals with a relatively small proportion of Community law infringements.
It also has to be recognised that, since much of this law is made up of directives which have to be transposed into the Member States' domestic legal systems, once they have been transposed, the instrument concerned belongs to domestic law and any infringement must be dealt with by the national courts. I know that is understood in this House, but I spell it out for the record in the hope that it might eventually trickle through to the understanding of the press in Member States and maybe eventually to the public, who are persuaded daily by the newspapers that there is a great centralising process going on in the European Union when in fact the opposite is the case.
The report from the Committee on Legal Affairs and the Internal Market refers to the need to shorten the time taken to deal with complaints. Naturally we sympathise with that objective and we are therefore contacting relevant Member States with a view to securing faster compliance with Community law and reducing Member States own handling times, particularly by greater use of the computerised system. As I have already said, in the interests of greater transparency the Commission is now publishing its decisions to send letters of formal notice, to issue reasoned opinions, to refer cases to the Court or to close or withdraw cases immediately a decision has been taken.
I would also stress that specifically in response to Parliament's concern, the 18th Annual Report relating to the year 2000 will contain a specific section on the management of exceptions to the harmonisation which Member States enjoy under Article 95 of the Treaty.
The Commission also notes Parliament's concern about the need to improve cooperation between the Commission and the national authorities responsible for implementing secondary legislation. As you know, there are regular contacts between Commission departments about specific problems with the application of Community law through package meetings and so-called directives missions. However, the Commission is also looking at ways of improving the procedure for the notification of national implementing measures as an extension of the IDA programme for the interchange of data between administrations. That work involves the networking of Community and national legal databases covering directives and national implementing measures and will also give the public easier access to Community law and assist with the training of lawyers in Community law. The network will also provide direct access to the reports on domestic application of Community law produced by specific national authorities.
In conclusion, Commission action on monitoring Community law is crucial to fulfilling our essential mission of preserving the Community legal order, fairly, firmly, consistently, and with public understanding. The active interest of this House in such activities is invaluable and we are therefore grateful to it for its continuing support and understanding.
Every year, each of the two periodical reports on suspected infringements produced before infringement proceedings are open and each of the two reports on established infringements that are produced after notice has been given to the Member State concerned cover some 2 000 or so cases investigated by the Commission. The bulk of these are individual cases of incorrect application of Community law by the Member States' authorities. Clearly it is only possible to deal with such a caseload with a procedure which combines the advantages of individual examination of cases, speedy processing and compliance with the principle of collective responsibility applied in the Commission. The development of an efficient computerised system is also essential to fulfilling this task. For this reason a single management database has been set up, covering all infringement files opened by the Commission and covering data on the transposal of directives by Member States.
One benefit of this system is that it enables the Commission to take action systematically against Member States which have not adopted national measures to implement directives before the time allowed for transposal is completed. As the House will know, this is not an obsession with uniformity for some bureaucratic reason. It is essential in the interests of equity across the Union.
The development of an efficient computerised system will also make it possible to report in greater detail to the public on the action taken by the Commission to monitor application of Community law whenever a decision has been taken to issue a reasoned opinion or to refer a case to the court. The Commission is continuing its policy of issuing immediate press releases, which we first established in 1998, and in addition, since January of this year, decisions giving notice of an infringement, issuing a reasoned opinion, referring the case to court or terminating a case have also been published on the European Communities' Europa server as soon as they have been adopted by the Commission.
The peer pressure exerted by this greater transparency of decisions that relate to infringements by Member States may also help to promote more rapid conformity from Member States as they all now learn immediately of the decisions taken against each of them. Greater transparency can also be seen as a guarantee of fair hearing of complaints.
The House will be aware that because the Commission has a privileged position in bringing infringement proceedings it therefore has a unique ability to safeguard the interests of complainants. The guarantees offered by the Commission have been built up over time and they now mean procedural arrangements, which ensure registration of the complaint, strict confidentiality and information for complainants who may make their views known before any decision is taken to close the case. We are dedicated to ensuring maximum strength and maximum dependability in these vital procedures.
In its reply to the Ombudsman on the criticism of the management of the infringement case concerning the award of the contract for building the Thessaloniki metro, the Commission has therefore pledged itself to consolidating the administrative rules for complainants in order to facilitate contracts between complainants and Commission departments. Parliament will be informed of this consolidation as soon as it is complete.
The report adopted by the Committee on Legal Affairs and the Internal Market – which is the basis for the motion for a resolution before the House today – contains several findings and recommendations. For brevity, I hope that the House will permit me to deal only with the main ones.
I begin by saying that the Commission does not agree with the report's conclusions that the growing volume of infringements handled by the Commission departments, in particular on the basis of complaints, reflects a deterioration in the application of Community law."@en1
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