The European Parliament,

–   having regard to the Commission's 21st and 22nd annual reports (COM(2004)0839 and COM(2005)0570),

–   having regard to the Commission's staff working papers (SEC(2004)1638 and SEC(2005)1446 and 1447),

–   having regard to Rules 45 and 112(2) of its Rules of Procedure,

–   having regard to the report of the Committee on Legal Affairs and the opinion of the Committee on Petitions (A6-0089/2006),

A.   whereas the Commission's annual reports establish the state of transposition of directives by the Member States in order to ensure that the application of legislation is efficiently monitored; whereas according to the 21st report, 3 927 infringement cases were ongoing on 31 December 2003, including 1 855 cases for which proceedings had commenced, 999 cases for which a reasoned opinion had been issued, 411 cases which had been referred to the Court of Justice and only 69 cases (of which 40 concerned the environmental sector) for which proceedings under Article 228 of the EC Treaty had begun,

B.   whereas proper monitoring of the application of Community law involves not merely assessing transposition in quantitative terms but also evaluating the quality of transposition and of the practices adopted in actually applying Community law,

C.   whereas correct and swift implementation of Community legislation is an integral and essential part of "better regulation"; whereas clear and well-written legislation is an indispensable condition for the good application of Community law throughout the European Union; whereas the quality of legislation and the clarity of the obligations incumbent on Member States are not always satisfactory owing to the fact that the legislation is often the result of difficult political compromises,

D.   whereas the Commission may adapt the means it uses to carry out its mission effectively and make innovations designed to improve the application of Community law,

E.   whereas the Commission is currently working on the adaptation of existing procedures and on ways of making them faster and more efficient; whereas, however, this is not a sufficient reason for failing to transmit on time the information requested as to the total resources allocated to infringements in the relevant Directorates-General and the General Secretariat,

F.   whereas the number of complaints relating to infringements of Community law shows that European citizens play a vital role in its application, and that the capability properly to address their concerns is important for the credibility of the European Union,

G.   whereas citizens' complaints are not merely symbolic in building a "people's Europe" but constitute a cost-effective and efficient tool for monitoring the application of Community law,

H.   whereas effective legal protection and uniform application and interpretation are essential elements of Community law,

I.   whereas Parliament received the Commission's 22nd annual report only in January 2006 and whereas, because of this consistent delay, only partial reference to that report is made in the present resolution, the core analysis being of the Commission's 21st annual report dealing with the application of Community law in 2003,

1.  Is convinced of the real need for all European institutions to give serious, visible consideration and more convinced priority to the question of monitoring implementation, especially in view of the emphasis which has latterly been placed on the urgency of reducing the amount of Community legislation and legislative initiatives;

2.  Insists that any reduction in the amount of legislation must be off-set by more emphasis on implementation; stresses that complaints are a cost-effective and efficient tool for monitoring the application of Community law and calls on the Commission to make sure that at least some of the resources previously allocated to the drafting and follow-up of legislation are dedicated to the effective and correct implementation of existing Community legislation in the various units dealing with individual complaints and infringement cases;

3.  Is convinced that Parliament's committees should also pay attention to the issue of the application of Community legislation, and in particular that the rapporteur responsible should play a more active role in monitoring the implementation of Community legislation in the Member States, whereby the regular sessions on implementation organised by the Committee for the Environment, Public Health and Food Safety can serve as an example;

4.  Understands that comitology is not the subject of this resolution and maintains that the matter accordingly needs to be dealt with in a separate resolution;

5.  Stresses that Article 211 of the EC Treaty assigns to the Commission institutional responsibility for ensuring the application of the provisions of the Treaty and of the measures taken by the institutions pursuant thereto, and that Article 226 of the EC Treaty empowers the Commission to take action against Member States for any failure to fulfil their obligations under the Treaty;

6.  Notes that the main problems with the infringement procedure (Articles 226 and 228 of the EC Treaty) are its length (54 months elapsing on average from registration of the complaint to referral to the Court) and the limited use of Article 228;

7.  Notes that the Commission organises four meetings a year to decide on infringement procedures and that all decisions (from the first letter of formal notice, aimed at obtaining information from the Member State concerned, to the decision to seise the Court of Justice) are taken by the College of Commissioners; whilst appreciating the relevance of, and the need for, collective intervention for the infringement phases, proposes that careful thought be given to the possibility of the internal procedure being shortened in the initial stage of proceedings by authorising each Member of the Commission to send letters of formal notice to the Member States within the field of his or her responsibility, as is already the practice in cases where a Member State has not transposed Community law into its national legislation within the set deadline;

8.  Notes the insufficient level of cooperation by the national courts in most Member States, which are still reluctant to apply the principle of the primacy of Community law;

9.  Welcomes the Commission's Communication entitled "Better Monitoring of the application of Community law" (COM(2002)0725), which sets out various actions to achieve its aim;

10.  Regrets nevertheless that the Commission has not presented any structured, detailed follow-up to some of the commitments announced in the above-mentioned Communications, such as the commitment that "the application of the priority criteria will be assessed annually, when the report on the monitoring of the application of Community law is discussed";

11.  Calls on the Commission to conduct a specific evaluation of the application of the priority criteria listed in the above-mentioned Communication, with the aim of assessing whether such an exercise is really needed and whether it may not risk reducing excessively the scope of infringement procedures, for which the Treaty does not provide any hierarchy; calls on the Commission to assess whether a simple increase in the available resources in the most exposed Directorates-General would not be a preferable solution with a view to improving the capacity to follow up complaints; points out that legal experts are needed in the Commission departments responsible for transposition to analyse whether legislation has been transposed in all its complexity; notes that it is not possible to rely solely on an automatic concordance system in order to analyse transpositions;

12.  Calls on the Commission to keep Parliament informed of the results of such evaluations; insists that the definition of priorities should not lead to a decreased response to citizens" complaints and urges the Commission to consult Parliament on any possible change in the priority criteria;

13.  Calls on the Commission to place the principle of the rule of law and citizens' experience above purely economic criteria and evaluations; urges the Commission to monitor carefully the respect of the fundamental freedoms and general principles of the Treaty as well as the respect of regulations and framework directives; invites the Commission to use secondary legislation as a criterion for determining whether there has been an infringement of fundamental freedoms;

14.  Urges the Commission to re-evaluate cooperation with the Member States within the meaning of Article 10 of the EC Treaty, in light of the fact that most Member States are not prepared to do much to improve the implementation of Community law as was confirmed during the negotiations on the Interinstitutional Agreement of 16 December 2003 on better law-making(1), when the Council refused to make any commitment in matters concerning transposition and implementation; declares its support for re-opening negotiations with the Council on this issue, with a view to amending the Interinstitutional Agreement;

15.  Calls on the Commission seriously to reassess its indulgence of Member States when it comes to meeting deadlines for submitting requested information to the Commission, adopting and communicating national implementing measures and correctly applying Community legislation at national, regional and local levels;

16.  Notes that the Member States have decided to set up specific structures dealing with implementation; welcomes the Commission's efforts in supporting the setting-up of appropriate coordination points in each Member State, with the aim of improving the entire transposition and implementation policy and the efficiency of the pre-litigation stage of infringement proceedings; suggests that the Member States should not only establish technical structures but also appoint political figure(s) responsible at national level for infringement policy;

17.  Points out that emphasis on organisational issues and communication flows should not hide the fact that many cases of incorrect implementation are the result of poor-quality legislation and reflect Member States' deliberate efforts to undermine Community legislation for political, administrative and economic reasons; in this connection, notes that the Commission is in the habit of accepting late intervention by the Member States in order to close infringement proceedings; calls on the Commission to ask the Member States to guarantee retroactive application of the Community provisions which have been infringed, in order to remove all effects of the infringement, with an immediate recourse to Article 228 of the EC Treaty in the event of persistent failure to comply;

18.  Notes that the Internal Market Problem Solving System (SOLVIT network) has proved its effectiveness in the internal market as a complementary non-judicial mechanism which has increased voluntary cooperation among Member States, but considers that such mechanisms should not be regarded as a substitute for infringement proceedings which are designed to oblige the Member States to apply Community legislation; calls on the Member States to make allocate greater human and financial resources to their national contact points for the SOLVIT network;

19.  Considers it essential for legislation to be drafted in a way that is more enforcement-friendly; considers it equally important to improve citizens' understanding of Community legislation and therefore proposes that a citizen's summary be included in the form of a non-legalistic explanatory statement accompanying all legislative acts;

20.  Is convinced that, while it is important to devote time and effort to developing dialogue with Member States and improving the assistance afforded to them in order to facilitate swift, correct transposition of Community legislation, tighter discipline is necessary, notably after enlargement, in order to avoid excessive delays and persistent differences in the quality of national transposition;

21.  Believes that a specific clause obliging Member States to draft a concordance table when transposing directives should be inserted systematically into each newly adopted directive;

22.  Notes that in 2004 about 41% of new directives included provision for a concordance table; believes that the European Parliament, as co-legislator, should support proposals to introduce into directives provisions obliging the Member States to use the concordance table for notification; calls on the Commission to report to Parliament regularly on the application of such provisions;

23.  Welcomes the effort made by some Directorates-General of the Commission – and notably DG Environment – to improve the conformity checks on the relevant directives, in particular following enlargement; calls on the Commission to publish on its website the studies requested by the various Directorates-General on the evaluation of the conformity of national implementation measures with Community legislation;

24.  Notes that there are several procedures available for dealing with non-conformity and that such procedures are sometimes repeated without attaining the objective of persuading the Member States to modify their transposition acts; stresses that in such cases delays in the procedure can be highly detrimental to citizens, because the focus is not on individual cases but rather reflects a general problem; therefore calls on the Commission to take a tough stance on cases of non-communication and non-conformity of national implementing measures with Community legislation and to move through the various stages of the procedure laid down by Article 226 of the EC Treaty in accordance with fixed, non-negotiable time-limits, laid down in appropriate soft-law instruments (communications, guidelines), in order to arrive as soon as possible at the imposition of fines pursuant to Article 228 of the EC Treaty;

25.  Invites the Commission to present a list of those directives which have the worst record in terms of their implementation and to explain what it considers the underlying reasons for this to be; points out that, under the case-law of the Court of Justice and Article 10 of the EC Treaty, the Member States are required to ensure that an adequate system is in place for effective and proportionate sanctions, to act as a deterrent against infringement of Community provisions; considers that failure to adopt an effective system of sanctions should be pursued with due severity under the infringement procedure;

26.  Notes that the present procedures give citizens no rights beyond lodging a complaint and that the Commission, in its role as guardian of the Treaty, has a broad discretion as to whether to register a complaint and start proceedings; considers that there is nothing in the Treaty or the case-law of the Court of Justice to prevent the use of appropriate legislative instruments to give further rights to complainants, and therefore calls on the Commission to take steps to adopt such instruments; is convinced that this important and exclusive prerogative should correspond to a duty of transparency and accountability as to the reasons why decisions are taken, notably decisions not to pursue complaints;

27.  Welcomes the Commission's Communication to the European Parliament and the European Ombudsman on "Relations with the complainant in respect of infringements of Community law" (COM(2002)0141);

28.  Urges the Commission to respect the principles stated in that Communication to the effect that all complaints likely to denounce a real violation of Community law that are received by the Commission should be registered, without any selection, unless they fall within the exceptional circumstances referred to in point 3 of the Annex to the Communication; notes that the European Ombudsman has recently received specific complaints denouncing the non-registration of complaints and is currently investigating them; calls on the Commission to submit a regular report to Parliament on cases of non-registration of complaints in line with the above-mentioned Communication;

29.  Notes that the time-limit of one year laid down in the Communication between the registration of a complaint and the actual sending of a letter of formal notice or the decision to shelve the case is too long; notes furthermore that this deadline is not always met, leaving the complainant in a state of unacceptable uncertainty; therefore calls on the Commission to send letters of formal notice, which do not imply any "negotiations" yet with the Member States, within a short period of the registration of the complaint and to strive to move ahead quickly with the procedure on the basis of prompt deadlines from which exemption is possible only in exceptional cases;

30.  Urges all services of the Commission to keep complainants – and where appropriate also the MEP involved – fully informed of the progress of their complaints at the expiry of each pre-defined deadline (letter of formal notice, reasoned opinion, referral to the Court), to provide reasons for their decisions and to communicate them in full detail to the complainant in accordance with the principles stated in its Communication of 2002, which should allow the complainant to make further observations (such information should include, notably in the cases in which the Commission envisages shelving the complaint, the arguments presented by the Member State involved);

31.  Calls on the Commission to adopt a specific procedure which would allow the complainant and the MEP involved to have access to the documentation and to the substance of the correspondence exchanged with the Member State;

32.  Calls on the Commission to provide specific data on compliance with time-limits as set out in its internal Manual of Operational Procedures, which could only be obtained informally; reiterates the importance of setting deadlines from the date of registration of a complaint for providing the complainant with an answer and for sending out a letter of formal notice;

33.  Notes that, since their inception, proceedings under Article 228 of the EC Treaty have led to judgments of the Court of Justice in only three cases; welcomes the Commission's Communication on the Application of Article 228 of the EC Treaty (SEC (2005)1658), which clarifies and develops the policy of the Commission in asking the Court of Justice to impose a periodic payment order and a lump sum payment order on a Member State which fails to comply with the judgment of the Court;

34.  Asks the Commission formally to specify that, in accordance with its Communication of 2005, all cases already subject to letters of formal notice and reasoned opinions under Article 228, as well as cases currently subject to Article 226 proceedings, will be subject to the new policy (if not resolved before referral to the Court);

35.  Recalls that petitions forwarded by individuals to the Commission, to the European Ombudsman and to the relevant parliamentary committees should encourage the European Institutions to assess the way in which Community law is being implemented at national and European level;

36.  Reiterates its belief that close cooperation and monitoring arrangements between the Commission, the Council, the European Ombudsman and the relevant parliamentary committees are essential in order to ensure effective intervention in all cases where the petitioner has justifiably complained of an infringement of Community law;

37.  Insists that, in its future annual reports, the Commission must present data that accurately reflect the important and distinct contribution made by petitions to the monitoring of the application of Community law, and reiterates the request made in its resolution of 9 March 2004(2) for the inclusion of a chapter devoted exclusively to petitions;

38.  Considers it necessary for the procedural rights of petitioners to be defined in a similar way to the rights of complainants, which were set out in the Commission's Communication of 2002; considers that procedural questions related to the parallel treatment of complaints and petitions need to be clarified and that coordination between the services concerned must be further improved so that the Committee on Petitions can ensure that the rights of petitioners are respected;

39.  Notes from its experience that it is difficult for citizens petitioning Parliament to invoke rights derived from Community law before national courts and to obtain reparation for loss or damage sustained on account of breaches of Community law by Member States;

40.  Deplores the Commission's unwillingness to investigate alleged violations of Community law that lie in the past and have since been remedied, such as those raised in the "Equitable Life" and "Lloyd's of London" petitions; urges the Commission to investigate such cases when the alleged failures are said to have caused significant damage to individuals, since the outcome of such investigations could be immensely helpful to citizens in obtaining compensation through the appropriate legal channels;

41.  Considers it necessary to examine ways of improving procedures at an inter-institutional level in order to provide more effective non-judicial means of redress for European citizens, as a corollary to the right of petition contained in the Treaty; suggests in this regard that consideration might be given to the setting-up of a "SOLVIT"-type organisation within the European Parliament whose function it would be to assist Members with casework of a legal nature;

42.  Calls for increased cooperation between national parliaments and the European Parliament and their respective parliamentarians, so as to promote and increase effective scrutiny of European matters at national level; considers that national parliaments have a valuable role to play in monitoring the application of Community law, thus helping to strengthen the democratic legitimacy of the Union and bring it closer to the citizens;

43.  Urges the Commission to send its annual reports on monitoring the application of Community law to the national parliaments, so that they are better able to monitor such application by the national authorities;

44.  Instructs its President to forward this resolution to the Council, the Commission, the Court of Justice, the European Ombudsman and the parliaments of the Member States.

(1) OJ C 321, 31.12.2003, p. 1. (2) OJ C 102 E, 28.4.2004, p. 512.