Country data: France

All comparisons are with the figures for 10 December 2020, the previous reporting date.

The last 2 years, the COVID-19 pandemic forced Member State authorities to address pressing priorities and affected their performance in transposing EU rules to some degree. In this context, the Commission has taken a number of extraordinary measures aimed at relieving the strain on Member States’ administrative resources. Nevertheless, it has also made clear that the Member States’ legal obligations to transpose EU directives in time remain unchanged.

Transposition deficit (percentage of all directives not transposed): 0.6% (last report: 0.3%) – an increase of 0.3 percentage points. France is among the top performers for this criterion, having the third lowest deficit among Member States.         
EU average = 1.6%; proposed target (in the Single Market Act) = 0.5%

Since its best ever result of December 2017 (0.2%), France has remained under the 1% threshold set by the European Council. It managed to achieve this despite the unusually large number of directives that the Member States had to transpose in 2016 and a possible lack of resources due to the COVID-19 pandemic. However, it did not transpose 5 of the 26 single market directives (19%) due to have been transposed in the 6 months before the cut-off date for calculating the deficit (1 June to 30 November 2021). This shows that France organises the timely transposition of directives quite well, although it should focus on the quality of the transposition (see below).

Overdue directives: 6 (last report: 3). No directive is more than 2 years overdue.

Average delay in transposing directives: 4.4 months (last report: 4 months) – a slight increase of 0.4 months and the second shortest delay of all the Member States. 
EU average = 8.6 months

Of France’s 6 overdue directives, 1 has been due for about 15 months and 5 for less than 6 months.

Conformity deficit (percentage of all directives transposed incorrectly): 1.5% (last report: 1.7%) – a slight decrease of 0.2 percentage points   
EU average = 1.3%; proposed target (in the Single Market Act) = 0.5%

The number of new infringement proceedings that the Commission has launched against Member States for incorrectly transposing single market directives has more than halved in 2 years. Nevertheless, the number of ongoing cases is still high. With 15 directives presumed to have been incorrectly transposed, France’s conformity deficit is above the EU average deficit.

All comparisons are with the figures for 1 December 2020, the previous reporting date.

Pending single market cases: 39  (5 new cases and 5 cases closed; last report: 39 pending cases) – the same as in the previous reporting period, placing France above the EU average.   
EU average = 27 cases

France now is one of the 5 Member States with the most infringement cases, up from sixth place 1 year ago.

The Commission launched 120 new cases against Member States in the reporting period (besides those for late transposition), and these were still pending on 1 December 2021. A total of 5 cases were launched against France, which is above the EU average of 4 new cases launched in the reporting period. In addition, only 5 French cases have been resolved since December 2020, which is fewer than the EU average (8).

Problematic sectors: the environment (14 cases), including 4 on atmospheric pollution and 3 on water protection and management; transport (4 on road and rail transport, and 3 on air transport ); services and professions (6 cases); direct taxation (5 cases). Together, these make up 82% of all pending cases.

Average case duration: 41.1 months for the 37 single market cases not yet sent to the European Court of Justice (last report: 37.5 months) – this is a slight increase of 3.6 months but the duration of cases is now shorter than the EU average.              
EU average = 42.8 months

The average duration of French cases has decreased by 11% in the last 3 years. France recently managed to resolve 5 cases in more than 4 years on average. This included a 16-year-old case on air transport. However, one quarter of its cases (10/37) have lasted more than 5 years. One case on air pollution has been running for 12 years and another on air transport for 11 years. Their long duration of these cases is partly offset by the launch of 5 new cases (whose average duration is less than 12 months).

Time taken to comply with Court rulings: 39.7 months for the 4 single market cases at the Court-ruling stage of the procedure and closed in the last 5 years (last report: 38.3 months).   
EU average = 46.8 months

The situation in France is quite stable (+1.4 months). Three of its 4 cases concern water protection and management. It took more than 5 years to comply with the Court ruling for only 1 of them.

Evolution of infringement cases

Performance – France performed poorly.

• Results for all five indicators were below the EEA average.
• Performance on all indicators improved noticeably.
• Efforts to improve performance should continue.

• Caseload – very large
  Submitted cases: 153 (157 in 2020)
  Received cases: 336 (435 in 2020)

• Cases not accepted: 241 (200 in 2020)

• Resolution rate: 88% (82% in 2020)
• Handling time (home centre)
  Reply within 7 days: 69% (49% in 2020) – poor
  Cases prepared within 30 days: 80% (82% in 2020) – good
  Solutions accepted within 7 days: 76% (46% in 2020 ) – good

• Cases not accepted within 30 days:  60% (62% in 2020) – poor

• Handling time (as lead centre)
  Cases accepted within 7 days:  59% (28% in 2020) – poor
  Cases closed within 10 weeks:  52% (41% in 2020) – very poor
• Staffing level
  Urgent requiring action

In 2022, the average payment delay (the time exceeding the legal or contractually agreed payment terms) by French public authorities was 23 days.

The average number of days needed for a business to have its invoices paid by other businesses (business-to-business payments) was 55.25 days.

Note: A typical (mid-ranking) EU country is used for the EU average for all indicators except the publication rate. Due to delays in data availability, publication rate results are based on 2020 data.

Note: The EU restrictiveness indicator (EURI) measures the level of restrictiveness for the cross-border provision of services and the right of establishment for seven groups of professional services with a high share in EU firms’ intermediate consumption or cross-border mobility. The level of restrictiveness is measured on a scale from 0 (least restrictive) to 6 (most restrictive).