Member States’ compliance with EU law in 2018: efforts are paying off, but improvements still needed

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Today’s 36th Annual Report on Monitoring the Application of EU law sets out how the Commission monitored and enforced EU law in 2018. The online Single Market Scoreboard (edition 2019 based on data in 2018), also published today, evaluates the performance of EU/EEA countries in the EU single market and identifies the shortcomings where the countries and the European Commission should step up their efforts. Each failure to correctly and timely apply EU law denies citizens and businesses the rights and the benefits they enjoy under EU rules. The Annual Reportfor 2018 shows a small increase (by 0.8%) of open infringement cases compared to cases in 2017. On the Single Market Scoreboard, the best performing countries were Portugal, Slovakia, Finland, Sweden and Lithuania, while the most red (performance below average) and yellow (average performance) cards were given to Spain, Italy, Greece and Luxembourg. Citizens and businesses can only enjoy the many benefits of the single market if the rules that have been jointly agreed by Member States actually work on the ground. For the 2018 Annual Report, a full press release and an EU-28 fact sheet are available online as well as 28 fact sheets by country. For the EU Single Market Scoreboard, see the performance overview and the performance per Member State (28 EU countries and Iceland, Liechtenstein, Norway). Since 1984, following a request made by the European Parliament, the Commission presents an Annual report on monitoring the application of EU law during the preceding year. The European Parliament then adopts a resolution on the Commission’s report. 

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