A wave of legal proceedings has been triggered against EU member states for failure to implement EU legislation on the internal market. Referral by the Commission to the Court of Justice “due to lack of communication of national measures for the implementation” of the legislation is question involves a total of 19 member states and 8 different Directives: France, Germany, Greece, Malta, Portugal and Spain as regards the Directive on insurance intermediation; Latvia and Holland for a Directive on the supplementary surveillance of financial conglomerates; Spain for the Directive on market abuses; Sweden for the Directive relating to the recognition of professional qualifications; Luxembourg for a Directive on accountancy regulations. A motivated Opinion on the completion of the implementation of the well-known Directive IORP of 2004 relating to the activities and supervision of company or professional pension funds has lastly been sent to Belgium, Cyprus, Finland, France, Italy, Lithuania, United Kingdom, Czech Republic, Slovakia, Slovenia and Spain. Emphasising the “substantial progress” made by Brussels and by the member states in the sector, the European Commissioner for the internal market and services Charlie McCreevy declared that the Executive will do all in its power to “help member states to implement the legislation in good time to enable citizens and businesses throughout Europe to benefit fully from the internal market and the measurers signed up to by the states themselves”.
