Brussels, 27/02/2015 (Agence Europe) - On Monday 2 March, the Competitiveness Council will discuss single market policy with the aim of adopting conclusions.
This document will set guidelines for the European Commission in drafting its strategies on the internal market and the digital single market, the first of which is to be presented in the second half of the year and the second in May.
To structure the debate, the Latvian Presidency of the Council of the EU will provide a policy document of a few pages in length. In view of the weak growth and high level of unemployment, the document proposes to provide fresh impetus to the deepening and implementation of single market policy. A number of definite avenues will then be offered: - horizontal reform of the services market in the areas of notification (rule requiring member states to inform the Commission when they intend to bring in new requirements in the provision of goods and services) and proportionality (requirement on member states to ensure that their legal systems do not impose disproportionate demands on service activities); - efforts in terms of transposition and implementation of European legislative texts; - and improvement in the application of mutual recognition (introduction of specific clauses in the legislative texts).
On the basis of this document, the Latvian Presidency intends to ask the member states what they feel to be the main impediments and bottlenecks within the single market, and which measures or instruments the Commission could propose to remedy them.
Digital Single Market Commissioner Andrus Ansip will be present at breakfast and Single Market Commissioner Elzbieta Bienkowska at lunch.
The Danish, Dutch, Swedish and UK ministers will brief their counterparts on the results of the “Frontrunners” projects. This initiative was launched in May 2014 to strengthen the internal market between these countries, by means of increased coordination and sharing of best practice.
Two points of information by the Commission are scheduled. One will relate to the consultation on the Small Business Act, which closed in December of last year. And the other will be on the strategy on energy union (see EUROPE 11262). This latter point is not a matter that directly concerns the Competitiveness Council but it nonetheless has repercussions on competitiveness issues (for example, the price of energy).
Digital strategy. On Monday, ministers will discuss ways to create a genuine digital single market and the benefits this market will bring clients and companies across the EU. The Council will hold a debate on the aspects and dimensions of industrial policy within the future digital single market strategy. The debate will be informed by a guidance document and a questionnaire drafted by the Latvian Presidency inviting ministers to respond to three key issues: 1) the impact of integration of industry in the future digital single market strategy; 2) barriers preventing industry from adopting digital innovations and possible ways to remove these barriers; 3) definite measures to help create a fertile ecosystem for start-ups.
On Tuesday 3 March, ministers will turn their attention to relations between research, innovation and the digital economy and how these areas can boost growth and competitiveness. They will also discuss Big Data and what the EU can do to speed up transition to a data economy.
Research and innovation. With the European institutions having agreed to dip into the European research budget (Horizon 2020) to find the money for the European Fund for Strategic Investment (EFSI) which forms part of the Juncker plan, much to the chagrin of the scientific community, this meeting could allow ministers to find ways to compensate this “smash and grab”.
Ministers will, thus, be asked on Tuesday to suggest ways that the EFSI could help create sustainable research and online infrastructure, and the conditions that need to be put in place to encourage companies to invest in research and innovation (R&I). As part of the annual growth survey for 2015, ministers will have the opportunity to talk about the structural reforms to national R&I systems that will be best placed, in their view, to improve the quality of the strategies, programmes and research institutions and, more generally, to maximise the impact of R&I investment. Over lunch, ministers will discuss the preparation, between now and summer, of a roadmap for the ever so sensitive matter of establishing the European Research Area (see EUROPE 11164). (Jean Comte with Isabelle Lamberty and Jan Kordys)