Apparently my country isn’t such a good student in the classroom. That is one of the conclusions you can draw from the yearly publication of the European Commission about the application of guidelines. Last year 78 judicial cases were started or running at the European court against Belgium. All were complaints for not implementing or falsely implementing European guidelines. Only 5 countries do worse: Italy (112), Spain (103), Estonia (91), Germany (90) and France (85).
Belgium still has to implement 1,4% of the guidelines. Or more precisely: in 2008 Belgium still had to implement 23 of the 1678 guidelines. The average of the 27 member states lies at 1,0 %.
Although Belgium is a bad pupil it hasn’t flunct yet, because the law is that no country may have more than 1,5% of not implemented guidelines. 5 countries have failed to reach that target. Cyprus, Greece, Portugal, Poland and Luxembourg transgressed the barrier. Interesting fact: Portugal has reached its best result ever.
On the other hand Belgium has broken another European law. No guideline may have a delay of more than 2 years. Belgium counts 4 violations. Only 2 member states do worse.
Just last Thursday the European Court of Justice in Luxembourg convicted Belgium for not having an external emergency plan for major accidents involving dangerous and toxic substances. Belgium argued that they are close to making such a law on national level and that we do have one at provincial and municipal level. But the European Court said that it was too late. You can’t blame them for this ruling; it should have been done 7 years ago.
But there is hope. There is a big chance that Belgium will better its behaviour. Because mid 2010 Belgium will become the new temporary president of the European Union and it is tradition that the new president makes a big catch up. The trouble is that a decline after the presidency is also tradition.
(22 votes, average: 3.95 out of 5)
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