EU member states need to integrate the acquis communautaire or the total body of EU law into national legislation to be sure that the results intended by EU policies are achieved. In Poland, this process has often been long and complicated. Today, the country is battling a 2 % transposition or integration deficit. A Norway Grants projects has now been initiated by the Polish Office of the Committee for European Integration (UKIE) to remove the identified bottlenecks.
UKIE is the Polish national coordinator of the transposition process and also the institution that monitors the implementation. For some years, Poland did rather well, but lately the country has been lagging behind, with a transposition deficit of 2 % (2009 target is 1%), and with only Luxembourg behind them on the ranking.
At a conference on the transposition of community acts to the Polish legal system, Undersecretary of State in UKIE Maciej Szpunar underlined that the goal of the Norway Grants project was to improve the process in Poland of implementation of EU laws and make it more efficient and more transparent.
During the project, expert reports and analyses will be commissioned to address problems and bottlenecks identified during the transposition process. Moreover, a new online database, e-STEP, has been set up to help UKIE streamline the administrative process and share information with the public. e-STEP will provide Polish authorities with the necessary monitoring tool to coordinate the transposition processes.
Picture credit: Office of the Committee for European Integration (UKIE)