European Union Single Market Scoreboard website covering 13 different tools launched

Single Market Scoreboard website launched – new figures are now available online

4-7-2013 — /europawire.eu/ — With today’s launch of the online only Single Market Scoreboard, a more comprehensive and user-friendly reporting system has been put in place. The Single Market Scoreboard incorporates comprehensive reports on 13 governance tools including monitoring the correct transposition of EU directives, analysis of infringement proceedings, administrative cooperation networks and various information and problem-solving services.

The Single Market Scoreboard 2012/2013 aims at giving an overview of the actual situation on the ground. It covers the results that have been achieved by the Member States, but also provides examples of the difficulties citizens and businesses still face in exercising their EU rights.

Many barriers remain in the areas of social security, rights of residence, recognition of professional qualifications and registration of motor vehicles. The Single Market Scoreboard reflects on the strengths and weaknesses and shows where further action is needed in each of the Member States.

Main conclusions

The following “traffic light chart” shows at glance how the individual Member States performed for the governance tools where monitoring wasimplemented.

Source: http://ec.europa.eu/internal_market/scoreboard/performance_overview/index_en.htm

According to this chart, the best overall performers are: Estonia, Sweden, Austria, the United Kingdom, Germany, Cyprus, Lithuania, Hungary, Denmark, Malta and Finland with no “red lights”. Two further Member States, Luxembourg and The Netherlands have only one “red light”, but this is balanced by respectively 7 and 5 green scores.

Transposition

During the last six months, Member States have succeeded in maintaining the average transposition deficit – the percentage of Internal Market Directives that have not been transposed into national law in time – at a low level of 0.6 %. Some of them have made huge efforts and managed to improve their performances remarkably – a good result, especially given the present economic crisis.

Infringements

On Single Market related infringement proceedings, the EU average number of open cases has decreased slightly from 31 cases to 30 cases per Member State, which reflects a slow but steady downward trend.

SOLVIT

SOLVIT is an on-line problem-solving network dealing with misapplication of internal market rules. It managed to keep a good resolution rate of 89% while reducing the time necessary to deal with cases. Portugal and the United Kingdom managed quick response times along with good resolution rates. The Czech SOLVIT centre could still improve.

Your Europe

The Your Europe website is a multilingual public information service that provides comprehensive information and access to assistance for citizens and enterprises intending to carry out cross-border activities within the European Union. The interest in and use of Your Europe is growing fast: in one year visits to the website have almost doubled to more than 4 million visits. The most visited sections are “work” (for the citizen part) and “managing” (for the business part). Greece and The Netherlands could invest more in the promotion of Your Europe and contribute more to its content.

Points of Single Contact

The Services Directive provides for Points of Single Contact (PSC) to be set up in all Member States. PSCs are online e-government portals providing information about the rules, regulations and formalities that apply to service activities and the possibility to complete the relevant administrative procedures online. All Member States have now set up at least a “first generation PSC”. However many need to step up their efforts to ensure that their PSCs respond to users’ needs, especially Bulgaria. On the other hand, the United Kingdom, The Netherlands and Denmark belong to the group of best performers.

Internal Market Information

The Internal Market Information (IMI) system enables the exchange of information between national administrations in the area of “professional qualifications”, “services” and “posting of workers”. Its usage has grown by 24% over the last year, but authorities need to pay more attention to meeting mutually agreed deadlines and follow the lead of Estonia, Malta and Spain with excellent response times.

EU Pilot

EU Pilot promotes early problem-solving between the Commission and Member States on issues concerning EU law. The benchmark for the average response time by Member States is 70 days. Three countries, Belgium, France and Spain did not respect this benchmark.

EURES

The EURES platform and network which provide information, advice and recruitment/placement services have, in the light of the current economic situation, been used increasingly in 2012 (more than two million visits per month), actively contributing to alleviating labour market imbalances.

Background

Since 1998, the Commission has published an Internal Market Scoreboard twice a year to report on transposition and infringement figures concerning Single Market law. In addition, there were reports on Single Market governance tools such as SOLVIT and IMI.

To give a better overview of the functioning of the Single Market as a whole, these reports have now been merged into an online only Single Market Scoreboard covering 13 different tools, which will be updated on a yearly basis (except for the statistics on transposition and infringement proceedings, which will be updated twice a year).

Croatia will be added as of next year’s edition.

Further information:

http://ec.europa.eu/single-market-scoreboard