Implementation of EU legislation
Regulations have immediate and binding effect and do not have to be transposed into national laws.
Directives and framework decisions, on the other hand, have to be transposed into national laws.
Member states sometimes amend their national legislation just to accommodate the Community requirements. The German Ministry of Justice calculated that 84 % of all German laws between 1998 and 2004 originated in the EU.
85 % of directives are transposed into Danish law by administrative means, usually by way of an authority for the Minister contained in an originating act. The EU’s influence may therefore be difficult to detect.
Figures given for the percentage of all laws that emanate from the EU are not always correct. In the revision of the Danish Post Office Act in 1995, for example, an anticipated EU directive on postal business was taken into account, according to an answer by the Transport Ministry to a parliamentary question on 14 May 1999.