Nationalist MEP Simon Busuttol has been appointed by the European Parliament’s Internal Market Committee to draw up a report on the European Commission’s internal market scoreboard – a twice annual publication which benchmarks the 27 member states on the amount and quality of transposition of EU directives into their national law books.

Malta has been topping this scoreboard for the past years, having one of the best transposition records among member states.

By the end of 2010, Malta’s transposition deficit, meaning the number of directives still not incorporated into national law after two years from their publication in the EU’s official journal, stood at just 0.1 per cent, the lowest level among the 27 member states amounting to just two outstanding directives. The average for the EU stood at 0.9 per cent or 24 directives.

Malta was also considered by the Commission as the most efficient EU member state where it comes to resolving infringements.

In fact by the end of 2010, Malta had managed to resolve 77 per cent of its alleged breaches of EU law in a short time and without the need for the EU executive to pursue the issue further by sending the case in front of the European Court of Justice. During the first meeting of the Internal Market Committee on the subject, Dr Busuttil said that the report comes at a time when the eurozone is on everyone’s agenda.

“This debate should give us the opportunity to look at how we can get out of the crisis, by making full use of our single market, the most important project of European integration.” he told MEPs.

“The internal market is something that we have built together, that has worked and that can be further strengthened. This scoreboard goes in that direction by establishing a public record on how each member state is living up to its commitments in relation to the internal market,” Dr Busuttil said.

In his introductory remarks, Dr Busuttil also emphasised the importance of implementation of laws and insisted that EU fines should be used as a deterrent in getting member states to comply, as already envisaged by the EU Treaty.

Dr Busuttil’s report will eventually have to be approved by the European Parliament plenary session.

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