Monitoring the application of Community law. 18th annual report 2000, 19th annual report 2001

The European Parliament adopted a resolution drafted by Diana WALLIS (ELDR, UK) on the Commission reports. It welcomed the improvements the Commission had announced to its administrative procedures with regard to infringements of Community law, and asked the Commission to keep complainants fully informed of the progress of their complaints. Short deadlines should be set for the pre-litigation phase of the procedure for breach. Furthermore, as a rule, the deadline for transposing directives should be clearly stated and should not be longer than two years. Parliament recalled that petitions forwarded by individuals to the Commission, the Ombudsman and Parliament's relevant committees enable the European Union to assess the way in which Community law is being implemented at national and European level. It asked the Commission, in future, to include in its annual reports on the monitoring of the application of Community law a chapter devoted to the petitions forwarded to it by Parliament's competent committees. Parliament went on to calls for increased cooperation between national parliaments and the European Parliament and their respective members, so as to aid and increase effective scrutiny of European matters at national level. Parliaments play a valuable role in monitoring the application of Community law, thus helping to strengthen the democratic legitimacy of the Union and bring it closer to the citizens. There will be enormous challenges that European lawmaking following enlargement. It will therefore be of even greater importance to establish clear political priorities and goals and, where possible, to simplify legislation, perhaps by greater use of framework directives, thus in turn facilitating the implementation process. Parliament welcomed initiatives to facilitate out-of-court settlement of disputes such as the European Extra-Judicial Network and the Financial Services Complaints Network. It asked the Commission to monitor the progress of these bodies and report its results to Parliament, as this process will constitute another helpful indicator of the application of Community law and access to justice. Finally, Parliament felt that coregulation and self-regulation would have an important role to play in regulating certain sectors of the economy. They must be subject to clearly defined condition. Both these instruments reduce the right to judicial review. There is a danger of thereby creating rules that are uncertain, less binding and less secure, that may result in artificial approximations and random transposition into national legislation. Any coregulation measure must be based on a legislative act adopted jointly by the Council and Parliament.�