Umeå, 16/09/2009 (Agence Europe) - Europe's health depends on its internal market. This is the main thrust of the message, delivered on Wednesday 14 October in Umeå, by European trade ministers during an informal meeting. They reasserted the fact that by strengthening the internal market, Europe would improve its competitiveness but in order to achieve this end they would need to make a number of adjustments.
Ewa Björling, the Swedish minister for trade stated: “We managed to define clear priorities to strengthen the internal market and Europe's competitiveness with the rest of the world”. A significant building block would be to attempt to “better coordinate common legislation”. In this connection, she identified the contradiction of “creating legislation that is supposed to facilitate European citizens' lives and then applying it in 27 different ways”. The minister, however, did not provide any concrete responses on what method should be followed to achieve this goal but did mention “increasing contacts between civil servants”. Although the absence of common legislation for the EU27 could in the future hamper the internal market and European competitiveness, another challenge to meet is that of actually understanding what the internal market is. Too few citizens, entrepreneurs and others, are aware of what trade opportunities this market offers, explained Björling. She believes that only one in two European citizens is aware of what advantages the internal market provides.
Ministers also discussed service sector development, an area that accounts for a considerable size of European GDP, compared to the ageing industrial sector, which is less competitive than that in countries with cheaper labour. The services directive is due to enter into force this year or at the beginning of 2010 and is the main spur to guiding this development. The Swedish minister explained that they had “to make things much easier for companies, with simpler rules and less bureaucracy”. She did, nonetheless, admit that there was still a lot to be done on the services front. She underlined the four freedoms at the heart of the internal market (movement of persons, services, goods and capital) and also highlighted a fifth: innovation - research and development in other words. In this regard, she urged the creation of a Community patent and affirmed that “if we have a Community patent, we would suddenly have a market of half a billion inhabitants”. Ms Björling awarded the Internal Market Prize for the first time, which is aimed at rewarding a person, company or charity every year, for its contribution to improving the internal market. Aurora de Freitas, a 65 year old woman from Portugal, currently living in France, won this prize. She obtained the prize in return for her “work to get rid of barriers preventing Portuguese citizens obtaining residency permits in other European countries”.
The director general for the internal market and services directorate, Jörgen Holmquist, from Sweden, welcomed the fact that the political programme of José Manuel Barroso, recently re-elected at the head of the European Commission, focuses on the internal market. According to Holmquist, this plays a “central role” in the main guidelines presented by the president of the Commission for the next five years.
On Thursday 15 October, Ministers responsible for the competitiveness portfolio met up in Umeå to discuss the future of Europe in the wake of the Lisbon strategy. During its presidency, Sweden launched the theme of an eco-performing economy that fused respect for the environment with economic growth. The country subsequently believes that it has put down the building blocks for this discussion that is expected to flow from the post-Lisbon situation. Maud Olofsson, the Swedish minister for industry in charge of competitiveness, emphasised that climate change and the financial crisis meant that the time had come for an eco-performing economy. These two events ought to provide a starting point for developing the economy. The solution for attaining the objective of an eco-performing Europe was located in partnerships between the public and private sectors and those expected to promote innovation, explained the minister.
A crucial stage in the possible development of an eco-performing economy is the Copenhagen summit, which is expected to prepare what will follow Kyoto. With seven weeks to go until this critical event, the Swedish minister echoed the wishes of the political class and enterprise, which she said hoped that the summit would obtain an agreement. She said that the business community wanted an agreement because it needed clear rules in a competitive environment between companies on the international market. She pointed out that Europe was at the cutting-edge of changes towards the eco-performing economy and affirmed that it needed to develop an “innovation-friendly climate”. This means that at a time when Europe's competitors are investing hugely, the EU should not handicap itself by not investing in greening the economy. In this connection, the minister lauded the advantages of instruments such as the carbon tax, which had helped “create innovative products” and reduce carbon dioxide emissions.
The European commissioner for industry, Günter Verheugen, said that the “future of the European economy would be green or it would not exist”. He expressed the wish for Europe to get back to its 2008 level of production, which since the crisis had fallen by 27 % - but without going back to the same emissions levels of the past. He also backed ministers who called for a change in spending structures as a way of promoting green investment necessary for attaining the 20% reduction level in CO2 emissions and 20% energy efficiency by 2020 compared to the 1990 level. The commissioner recognised that such investment will have a heavy cost on companies and prospects for short and medium term investment will be low. He concluded by highlighting the need to help companies make these investments, for example by way of public-private partnerships, because they will “improve our competitiveness”. (S.B./transl.fl)