Subnational authorities therefore already have an important role to play, both in the application of European legislation - for instance much of our environmental legislation imposes requirements on local authorities to deal with packaging and waste - and even, in some cases, in the transposition of directives into domestic legislation, as is the situation in Belgium, for example.
But there was a get out clause: To avoid a sudden readjustment of the market, the implementation of this rule should apply only to new contracts concluded after the date of transposition of this directive.
Member States will have 4 years for the transposition of the Directive into national legislation (by 6 February 2018).
All this progress notwithstanding, the transposition of the directive at national level needs to be closely observed.
On 19 December, the Commission also sent ten reasoned opinions to the Member States that had not yet notified full transposition of this directive.
Another important matter is that the transposition of the directive should take account of the local circumstances; it is yet more important that the protocol on subsidiarity should encourage local and regional authorities to exercise a constructive discretion in enabling the directive to make the most possible sense at local level.
My second question to the Commission is: will the European Commission examine the proportionality of measures taken by the Member States in respect of the permitted exceptions in the European data protection directive, as part of its task to oversee the correct transposition of European directives in national legislation?
Whereas, for example, in the Italian Guidelines [25] attached to the Regulations obtained by transposition of the EU Directive, an operational method for conducting road inspections is given.
I call on the Commission to monitor the transposition of the Postal Directive with a particular view to ensuring that the penalties planned at national level are not disproportionate and do not imperil the functioning of the postal market.
Indeed, the transposition into French law of Directive 2001/20/CE, which relates to good clinical practice in the conduction of trials on drugs for human use, has required the modification of certain provisions that concern the protection of persons participating in biomedical research, in particular those provisions concerning the conditions for the authorization of biomedical research.
