The Commission will send reasoned opinions to Belgium, France,
Greece, Ireland, Italy, the Netherlands and Portugal, instructing
them to implement quickly the E-Commerce Directive.
The Directive requires Member States to create a legal framework
to ensure the free movement of "information society services". The
deadline for Member States to transpose the Directive into their
national laws was January 2002.
Under EU law, Member States receiving reasoned opinions must
provide a satisfactory reply within two months, otherwise the
Commission has the authority to refer the matter to the European
Court of Justice.
The Commission will also send reasoned opinions to Belgium,
Finland, France and Greece for failing to amend their domestic laws
to comply with two Directives regulating the issuing of electronic
money, or e-money.
The Directives establish certain minimum rules to ensure that
issuers of e-money are stable and reliable, and to prevent
distortion of competition between such issuers and "traditional"
credit institutions. The Directives should have been implemented to
domestic laws by April 2002.
Also, Belgium, Germany, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, Portugal
and Spain will be referred to the European Court of Justice, after
failing to reply to reasoned opinions requiring them to implement
the Directive on the legal protection of designs.
The Directive, adopted in 1998, establishes criteria for
protection of designs in the Internal Market. Design holders will
have the choice to either register their designs under domestic
laws as harmonised by the Directive, or use the one-off process of
registering them as "Community designs."
Finally, reasoned opinions will be sent to Germany, Austria,
Belgium, France, Italy, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, Portugal and
Sweden to implement the Directive on the legal protection of
biotechnological inventions into national law.
This Directive aims to clarify certain principles of patent law
applied to biotechnological inventions, in order to enable European
companies to compete on level terms with their Japanese and
American rivals.
