Brussels, 04/02/2015 (Agence Europe) - Goods and services, public procurement, SMEs and industry will constitute the architecture of the next strategy for the single market. Commissioner Elzbieta Bienkowska revealed her goals for this “renewed” strategy to the EPP group at the European Parliament on Wednesday 4 February and summed it up as being “four areas, two priorities, a Single Market and thousands of potential jobs”.
The strategy for the internal market is one of the priorities in the 2015 European Commission work programme. The Commissioner for the Internal Market confirmed the fact that she intended to present her strategic document “before the end of the year”. In the area of a single market and services, she intends to focus on improved application of the services directive. With regard to the single market for goods, she is determined to get rid of products that fail to respect European standards, as well as getting rid of “the bad rules”. Emphasis is expected to be on mutual recognition, as well as better cooperation between the products and services involved.
The Commissioner would also like to move forward on the issue of public procurement by helping member states improve transposition of new European rules on the matter (April 2016 deadline) and by proposing practical solutions to facilitate cross-border access to public procurement.
With regard to entrepreneurs and SMEs, the Commissioner is planning on directly tackling the issue of access to finance, reducing administrative costs and “revitalising” the spirit of enterprise and modernising public administration. She also mentioned the possibility of beginning a rethink on bankruptcy and ways of providing businesses with a second chance.
Finally, the Commissioner announced that she would be proposing “several initiatives” for industry over the next few months but has not as yet provided any details about them. (MD)