Brussels, 23/09/2015 (Agence Europe) - Civil society should be consulted to a much greater extent in the preparation of new European legislation affecting the internal market, according to the European Parliament's internal market and consumer protection (IMCO) committee, which, on Wednesday 23 September, adopted an own initiative report on ways to improve the internal market.
“I believe we can make real changes on how we involve stakeholders in preparing legislation”, stated rapporteur Anneleen Van Bossuyt (ECR, Belgium) following the vote (22 votes for, 4 against and 12 abstentions). The report calls for faster digitisation of the internal market and for early warning mechanisms to be put in place to detect incorrect implementation of European legislation at national level.
With their report, MEPs also call for impact assessments to be “living documents” that take account of the various developments throughout the legislative process and the calls made by civil society. They call, too, for a body, comprised of independent experts, to be set up to produce joint analyses for the three institutions (European Commission, Council of the EU and European Parliament). They underline the need to ensure that the principles of proportionality, simplicity and transparency are reflected in the drafting of legislation.
Business response. These calls chime with a survey published on the same day by Eurochambres (European chambers of commerce and industry) on the business perspective, mainly that of SMEs, of operating across borders. The findings on access to information on the multiplicity of national rules and administrative procedures and the difficulties encountered in recovering payment make stark reading.
Given this situation, business make a number of proposals, such as a multilingual portal that provides information on the different national legislations, a VAT declaration system in 23 languages, a “services passport” giving access to all national markets and a guide containing all the information needed to be able to respond to public calls for tender. Business also suggested a three-year “start-up visa” allowing new businesses to operate across the EU subject to their own national rules. (Original version in French by Pascal Hansens)