European Commission opened 38 infringement cases against Romania in 2019 (report)

The European Commission opened 38 infringement cases against Romania in 2019, according to the 2019 annual report monitoring the implementation of European Union law published on Friday by the European Commission. Areas affected by infringement involving non-compliance with EU law include financial stability, financial services and the Capital Markets Union (3); justice and consumers (3); migration and home affairs (3); energy (3); mobility and transport (4); internal market, industry, entrepreneurship and SMEs (5); environment (5); taxation and customs union (6). As of December 31, 2019, there were 64 infringement cases open against Romania for failure to implement EU laws, up from 59 in 2018. At the same time, in 2019, 17 infringement cases were opened against Romania for late transposition of European legislation, according to the same document. The areas most affected by the new cases for late transposition opened in 2019 are environment (3); mobility and transport (3); financial stability, financial services and Capital Markets Union (2); internal market, industry, entrepreneurship and SMEs (2); justice and consumers (2). As of December 31, 2019, there were 24 infringement cases proceedings for late transposition, down from 34 in 2018. The annual report says that while the number of open infringement cases remained stable over 2019, the number of new infringement cases increased by over 20% compared to the previous year. Some of the main policy areas targeted were environment, internal market, industry, entrepreneurship and SMEs, and transport and mobility. Together these represented half of all cases. For example, it took action against three Member States for excessive air pollution, and against five Member States which failed to ensure equivalent access for disabled users to the 112 single European emergency number. Over half of all infringement proceedings in 2019 were related to the late transposition of directives, although the number went down slightly (from 419 cases in 2018 to 406 in 2019). In comparison, the highest number of new late transposition cases in the last five years was in 2016 (847 cases). AGERPRES (RO - author: Mariana Ionescu, editor: Florin Stefan; EN - author: Corneliu-Aurelian Colceriu, editor: Cristina Zaharia)