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Overall this year's Regular Reports again note significant progress in the adoption of legislation for alignment with the acquis in most candidate countries and for most areas. In a number of areas such as transport1, telecommunications, energy and justice and home affairs, however, important elements of new Community legislation have been or will be adopted shortly, in most cases building on previous Community law.
Some countries still have difficulties in transposing parts of the acquis. Nevertheless, despite the progress made over the past year, the major need now consists of building up adequate administrative structures and strengthening of administrative capacity to implement the acquis.
For most or all of the candidate countries, the Regular Reports and the proposed revised Accession Partnerships identify:
- in the field of the internal market, the need to establish or reinforce horizontal administrative infrastructures related to standardisation, accreditation, certification, conformity assessment, market surveillance, mutual recognition of qualifications, the supervision of financial services and to strengthen the enforcement of industrial and intellectual property rights;
- in the field of competition, the need to develop or strengthen enforcement capacity for state aid rules and antitrust provisions;
- in the field of transport and energy, the need to strengthen or set up appropriate regulatory structures (also in view of forthcoming new acquis) and inspection arrangements, in particular to ensure road and maritime safety;
- in the field of telecommunications and culture and audiovisual policy the need to setup or strengthen independent regulatory structures, for telecommunications especially also in view of the forthcoming new acquis;
- in the field of environment, the need to further strengthen administrative, monitoring and enforcement capacity, in particular in the field of waste, water and chemicals;
- in the field of social policy and employment, the need, in particular, to ensure the enforcement of occupational health and safety rules and to strengthen labour inspectorates;
- in the field of justice and home affairs, the overall need to strengthen the judicial system, the need to strengthen border management, most urgently at future EU external borders, and to prepare for the participation in the Schengen information system, as well as the need to ensure better cooperation of all actors to fight organised crime;
- in the field of customs and taxation, the need to develop ITsystems to allow for the exchange of electronic data with the Community and its Member States and the capacity of the tax and customs administration to enforce and control Community legislation, including external border controls;
- in the field of agriculture, the need to upgrade inspection arrangements according to veterinary and phytosanitary legislation, in particular to ensure food safety, and the capacity to implement and enforce the management mechanisms of the Common Agricultural Policy, in particular the Integrated Administration and Control System and the Paying Agency (for which, in the field of rural development, the respective SAPARD agency may be a precursor);
- in the field of structural policy, the need to strengthen administrative capacity in key ministries and to build up the appropriate administrative structures for programming, managing and controlling structural funds;
- in the field of financial control, the need to strengthen administrative capacity for public internal financial control and for the fight against fraud.
In a number of other areas, individual candidate countries equally need to improve administrative capacity. This can be the case in the chapters mentioned above, for example the need, for a number of countries, to establish or reinforce independent supervisory authorities for data protection, or in other chapters such as, for instance, fisheries, statistics or economic and monetary union. These priorities are specifically identified in each Regular Report and taken up in the proposed revised Accession Partnerships for each candidate country.
The Regular Reports also identify those chapters which do not pose major difficulties of administrative capacity, either because, in those chapters, there is little administrative capacity needed for the implementation of the acquis, or because the countries' preparedness can in general be considered adequate.
The conclusions of the Regular Reports, country by country, are contained in Annex 1.
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