Reporting period:
The Internal Market Information System (IMI) digitally connects national, regional and local authorities across the EU (EEA) by allowing them to quickly and easily communicate with their counterparts abroad. In some cases it also allows companies to submit information to the national authorities via a portal powered by IMI. This cooperation and swift exchange of information are essential for people and businesses to benefit from their Single Market rights.
Main advantages of IMI:
- Easy to customise and reuse, delivers fast implementation of new files
- Reliable tool with proven delivery track record
- Easy for authorities to search and find their counterparts in other countries
- Guiding authorities through the administrative procedures allowing them to easily implement the rules in a uniform manner
- Fully multilingual questions, answers and forms for requesting and sharing information
- Allows easy tracking of progress and status of the information exchanges
IMI and the Single Market – why does it matter?
Mutual assistance and administrative cooperation is key for the Single Market. IMI helps authorities across Europe to cooperate, in multiple policy areas, in an easy and streamlined way. IMI modernises and digitalises cross-border administrative cooperation and makes the Single Market a daily reality for citizens and businesses, which are the final beneficiaries of this cooperation.
Main achievements
- The Internal Market Information System (IMI) implements and enforces Single Market rules by digitally connecting administrations across borders and languages.
- IMI also accelerates the digital transformation of the EU public sector by providing it with a modern IT tool designed for efficient management.
- IMI is used daily in 21 policy areas by more than 44 000 public administration staff from over 12 600 authorities.
- In 2024 the system ensured 115 000 information exchanges, including 5 593 alerts and 43 724 notifications, bringing the total number of IMI exchanges to over 712 300.
- 80 000 road transport operators submitted an impressive 19.6 million posting declarations for more than 1.5 million drivers through the Road Transport Posting Declaration portal powered by IMI. With 52 million submitted declarations to in less than 3 years of operations, this portal significantly contributed to the smooth functioning of the road transport sector, saving time and resources and reducing administrative burden.
- In 2024, IMI integrated and modernised the Regulated Professions Database. This was a significant step towards creating a future one-stop-shop notification hub for Member States. It also improved data quality and allowed to transparently inform the professionals, via the public website, on the conditions they have to fulfil to work in another country.
- The scoreboard indicators show that the IMI users performed, overall, similarly to 2023. The requests answered within deadline and the speed in answering requests improved slightly while the requests accepted within a week decreased slightly.
- 20 countries had an above-average aggregated performance for all counted indicators, 9 had an average performance and 1 country was below average. 5 countries were above the average performance threshold for all indicators.
- Nevertheless, countries should continue their efforts to improve coordination and ensure that national authorities have the capacity to provide timely and high-quality responses to all requests and obligations.
- In the last year, the integration of EU Login (the EU’s authentication service) into IMI brought all IMI authorities into the same European administrative space and made the system more secure. The launch of the new future-proof user interface modernised IMI’s look and feel and brought in new technical features and upgrades.
Overall performance
A Member State’s performance across all indicators is calculated by scoring each of the five indicators listed in the “Performance per indicators” chart below as follows:
- red = -1
- yellow = 0
- green = +1
The colours on the map represent the sum of these scores:
- green: 2 or higher = above average
- yellow: -1, 0 or 1 = average
- red: -2 or lower = below average
Performance indicators
[1] Speed in accepting requests (% accepted within 7 days) | ≥ 80 | 60 – 79 | < 60 |
---|---|---|---|
[2] Speed in answering requests (avg. no. of days taken to answer) | < 16 | 16 – 25 | > 25 |
[3] Requests answered by the date agreed in IMI (%) | ≥ 80 | 60 – 79 | < 60 |
[4] Timeliness of replies as rated by counterparts (% of negative evaluations) | < 5 | 5 – 14 | ≥ 15 |
[5] Efforts made as rated by counterparts (% of negative evaluations) | < 5 | 5 – 14 | ≥ 15 |
The performance indicators are based on information requests sent in the following legal areas: professional qualifications, services, posting of workers and patients’ rights.
Priorities
The Commission focuses its efforts on:
- continuing to exploit the full potential of IMI by expanding it to potential new areas (e.g. green claims, European Cross Border Associations);
- developing a generic portal to allow seamless end to end communication between citizens/businesses and national authorities;
- contributing to the data driven policy making by providing statistics, accurate and transparent data for decision makers;
- exploiting synergies between IMI and other systems including national ones;
- enhancing the system’s long term sustainability through a future proof technical infrastructure.
Facts and figures
- More than 44 000 public officials in over 12 600 public authorities are registered users in IMI.
- 115 000 information exchanges took place in 2024. The total number of exchanges sent through IMI reached 712 300.
- 5 593 alerts and 43 724 notifications were sent through IMI in 2024.
- The European Professional Card (EPC) continued to deliver excellent results, even though it is only available for five professions (pharmacists, nurses, physiotherapists, real estate agents and mountain guides). A total of 2 493 decisions were taken on EPC applications in 2024.
- The Road transport posting declaration portal, linked to IMI, showed how efficient and useful it is by facilitating the submission of approximately 19.6 million posting declarations.
Statistics on the use of IMI
In which areas is IMI now used?
- Professional qualifications
- Services
- Posted workers (see also)
- Cross-border road transport of euro cash
- SOLVIT
- SOLVIT mutual recognition
- Patients’ rights in cross-border healthcare
- E-commerce (pilot project)
- Train driving licences (pilot project)
- Cultural objects
- European Professional Card
- Non-road mobile machinery
- General Data Protection Regulation
(GDPR) - Public Documents Regulation
- Firearms transfer authorisations (pilot project) and fire-arms refusals
- Consumer protection cooperation (pilot project)
- European Judicial Network in civil and commercial matters (pilot project)
- Road transport – posting declarations, social rules and conditions of establishment
- Database of regulated professions