Monitoring the application of Community law. 17th annual report 1999

The committee adopted the report by Mr Ioannis KOUKIADIS (PES, GR) on the Commission's 17th annual report on monitoring the application of Community law (1999). The committee felt that effective action was needed immediately to address the all too frequent failure to implement legislation properly. It wanted the Commission to do everything within its power, such as imposing stricter deadlines on Member States, to speed up the procedure for dealing with complaints or petitions. Furthermore, the simplification of Community law - for example, under the SLIM initiative - should be viewed as a priority, and the Commission was urged to present a complete programme of codification with binding deadlines. As far as the implementation of ·social· legislation was concerned, the committee felt that Member States should intensify their efforts and that the Commission should make better and more effective use of the remedies available to it, such as issuing reasoned opinions or threatening to impose fines. The committee also called on the Member States and the Commission to bring forward proposals imposing automatic penalties upon Member States which did not transpose Community legislation in the proper manner, in order to prevent Member States from deliberately delaying the transposition of Community law so that they could maintain their national legislation in force as long as possible. The committee wanted the national parliaments to be involved more actively in monitoring the application of Community legislation. The Commission should invite the national parliaments to discuss its annual report on the application of Community law and to forward their conclusions to the Commission, Parliament and the Council. Finally, the report pointed out that Parliament attached particular importance to the rigorous transposition of the electronic commerce directive and urged the Commission and the Member States to resist any attempts to roll back that directive or dilute its provisions, particularly as regards the country of origin principle and the liability of Internet intermediaries. �