Brussels, 28/10/2015 (Agence Europe) - The single market strategy presented on Wednesday 28 October by Internal Market and Industry Commissioner Elzbieta Bienkowska and Commission Vice-President with responsibility for Investment and Growth Jyrki Katainen proposes a raft of initiatives requiring legislative acts (see EUROPE 11417) but also better application of existing EU legislation.
The below par performance of the internal market is, according to Commission evaluation, in part a result of poor application of current rules. Bienkowska stated at the press conference launching the strategy that, if the internal market were correctly implemented, growth would be 2% higher than it is today. When she addressed the European employers' organisation BusinessEurope on Thursday 22 October, the commissioner regretted that, “far too often in the past, we have spent years negotiating legislation only to see it neutered: through weak implementation, through poor enforcement and through inadequate information”.
Addressing the issue of information, Katainen said that the strategy would provide effective mechanisms for gathering and sharing information so as to be better able to understand operators' behaviour on the market, for example on geo-blocking, a term which covers practices that prevent some internet users from accessing on line services because of where they live or their nationality.
The Commission, then, wants to act quickly so that the strategy produces results within four years, said Bienkowska. Thus, it will not announce any new legislative initiatives on the collaborative (or sharing) economy in the course of the next two years (see EUROPE 11419) but simply will publish guidance for member states in 2016 on the correct application of existing European legislation, such as the services directive, the e-commerce directive and a series of directives on consumer rights, including 2011/83/EU.
The same will be true for regulated professions in Europe. According to a European source who is following this matter very closely, at present there are over 5,000 professions covered by specific regulations, some of which go back several decades or more. “Some member states have forgotten the reasons why these regulations were put in place.” Here again, the Commission does not seek to bring forward new legislative proposals but intends to call on member states to give careful consideration to separate the wheat from the chaff in light of existing European legislation and the principle of proportionality. The aim again is to respond to the needs of the market. Another source cited the example of engineers, notaries and accountants, who play a crucial role in the competitiveness of the EU but who are subject to numerous and diverse national rules, fragmenting the internal market.
Related to this issue, the Commission was asked several times by journalists if it intended to re-open the services directive, seen as a difficult subject - something that it rejected categorically. “The problem is that the directive is not being applied on the ground”, according to the Commission, calling for it to be better implemented. To this end, the Commission announced the creation of a “services passport” (see EUROPE 11417), though how it will work is not yet clear, with the aim of simplifying administrative procedures for service providers by centralising all the information on companies rather than their having to provide specific documents to each member state, thereby creating uncertainty that hampers cross-border trade.
Now that the strategy has been launched, the ball is very much in the court of the joint legislators. It took six months to get the investment plan and the EFSI passed, said Katainen. He hopes that the joint legislators will take the internal market strategy as seriously as the Juncker investment plan. (Original version in French by Pascal Hansens)