Monitoring the application of European Union law in 2023, 2024 and 2025
The European Parliament adopted by 416 votes to 190, with 15 abstentions, a resolution on monitoring the application of European Union law in 2023, 2024 and 2025.
Monitoring and enforcement of EU law
Parliament took note of the Commission’s 2023 report on monitoring the application of EU law and regretted that the Commission did not publish an annual report on monitoring the application of EU law for 2024, thus breaking with a practice established over 40 years ago in 1983. It noted the Commission’s shift toward a new reporting cycle on monitoring the application of EU law, with annual progress reports on simplification, implementation and enforcement by each Commissioner, and an annual overview report on simplification, implementation and enforcement. Members welcomed the 2025 Annual Overview Report, and the Commissioners’ 2025 Annual Progress Reports, covering the period from 1 January to 31 July 2025, as a valuable source of factual information on the state of EU law implementation across sectors and Member States.
Parliament called for enhanced transparency in cooperation between the Commission, Parliament and the Council in the implementation and enforcement of EU law, including through regular structured dialogues, systematic sharing of data, and timely transmission of relevant documents to Parliament in line with the Interinstitutional Agreement on Better Law-Making. It also stressed the need to strengthen ex ante mechanisms ensuring that legislative proposals comply fully with the distribution of competences laid down in the Treaties, so as to avoid situations in which acts adopted through the full ordinary legislative procedure and endorsed by the Member States may subsequently be annulled, even partially, on the grounds of legal basis or competence.
The Commission is called on to publish an annual transparency report devoted specifically to the monitoring, simplification and enforcement cycle, detailing methodological changes, data sources, challenges encountered and consultations held with stakeholders and national administrations. Parliament also expressed concern about the regular lack of impact assessments accompanying legislative proposals, in particular legislative proposals with possible substantial impacts on fundamental rights.
Infringement procedures
Parliament expressed strong concern over the Commission’s reluctance to initiate infringement proceedings before the CJEU, even in cases involving clear and persistent breaches of EU law. It also criticised the lack of transparency with regard to the criteria used by the Commission to prioritise certain enforcement actions over others.
The resolution stated that Parliament received several petitions raising serious concerns about child sexual abuse, in particular online, and more broadly about repeated or systemic shortcomings in the implementation of EU law relating to child protection. It highlighted that, in 2023 and 2025, the Commission followed up on infringement procedures against 18 Member States for their incorrect transposition of Directive 2011/93/EU on combating child sexual abuse, of which 8 cases have been closed. The Commission should prioritise enforcement in this area and ensure swift and effective follow-up on petitions raising allegations of non-compliance.
Implementation of EU law
The Commission and the Member States are urged to strengthen structured cooperation and early-warning mechanisms that help detect problems with transposition or implementation before formal infringement procedures become necessary. Parliament noted that further support to build Member States’ administrative and technical capacity in this regard is needed given that some Member States either report transposition and/or implementation issues too late or fail to report them altogether.
Parliament noted with concern the limitations of the new Europa implementation platform, launched in April 2025, the aim of which is to centralise information on the Commission’s enforcement actions, infringement cases, the transposition of directives and pre-infringement dialogue, formerly known as the EU Pilot procedure. Despite its potential, the platform primarily consists of data tables and should be improved with a view to providing, in a transparent manner, essential information on ongoing or concluded procedures, and to making available exhaustive qualitative analyses of the data presented.
Simplification
The simplification of EU law must not be conflated with deregulation according to Members. Streamlining legal texts and procedures can improve clarity, legal certainty, and administrative efficiency and such a simplification process aims to reduce technical complexity, eliminate regulatory overlaps, harmonise the definitions and procedures laid down by acts governing related fields and guarantee the technical feasibility of implementation in national law.
In 2023, 59 out of 130 Ordinary Legislative Procedures were published without an impact assessment, and in 2024, 26 out 31 Ordinary Legislative Procedures were published without one. Members called for impact assessments to be carried out on all acts.
The resolution also called for a significant simplification of administrative obligations for beneficiaries of EU funds to ensure that EU funds are used properly. It regretted that by the end of 2023, only about a third of the total Recovery and Resilience Facility (RRF) funds had been disbursed to Member States, while seven Member States had not received any funds for the satisfactory fulfilment of milestones and targets from the RRF by the end of 2023, due to governments missing agreed milestones.
Lastly, Parliament noted with concern persistent shortcomings in the transposition and implementation of key legal instruments relating to asylum, migration, data protection, judicial cooperation and law enforcement.