The European Commission is supposed to ensure EU law is correctly implemented, but it’s far too slow at it, according to a report by the European Court of Auditors. Various factors contribute to the slow implementation of EU legislation.
Between 2012 and 2023, the Commission opened more than 9,000 infringement cases, showing that EU Member States aren’t doing a particularly good job at applying EU law. But enforcing EU law simply “takes too long,” the auditors said, although they admitted that the Commission has improved at detecting breaches.
In 2017, the Commission updated its enforcement strategy and tried to focus on the most serious cases. This led to the EU executive taking on fewer cases, but it didn’t translate into speedier remediation of infringements but rather longer case handling.
Various factors contribute to the slow implementation of EU law, Lefteris Christoforou, the member of the Court of Auditors responsible for the report, explained. These include „administrative challenges, resource constraints, and varying interpretations of EU requirements across member states.”
The auditors also found “considerable differences” in how the different Commission departments are handling infringements. The directorates general for agriculture, employment and transport have been the best performers, consistently taking less than a year on average to process a complaint. On the contrary, the Commission services for digital policy, energy and environment are consistently overshooting the one-year deadline to handle their cases.
These gaps can be explained by the fact that some departments, like the environment one, have more cases to handle than others and don’t always have the necessary staff to process them in a timely manner, jeopardising the correct implementation of EU law. This means that poor waste management, pollution or degradation of nature continues as EU governments remain noncompliant. „Delayed enforcement can mean, for example, prolonged exposure to pollution and slower progress in restoring damaged ecosystems,” Christoforou said.
