On Wednesday 21 March, MEPs on the internal market and consumer protection (IMCO) committee voted by 21 to 13, with 2 abstentions, to adopt the amendment rejecting the two legislative texts on the services e-card.
“I can’t say I’m very surprised. But after our negotiations, we had a strong text that could have made the lives of small businesses in Europe easier”, Morten Løkkegaard (ALDE, Denmark), rapporteur on the directive, told EUROPE.
In the compromise amendments, the e-card had a validity of five years, rather than the unlimited period of validity in the European Commission proposal. And the length of time allowed the host member state to determine whether a foreign service provider complied with national rules was extended from two to three weeks.
That was not good enough for many opponents of the text. The real problem, a Parliamentary source told us, is that the burden of proof that the service provider fails to comply with national rules is left to the host member state.
“Had the rapporteurs wanted to be constructive, they would have reversed the burden of proof. The problem is that, in that case, it would have taken us directly into the provisions of the services directive and the value added would have been nil”, our source added.
Although the IMCO committee vote was expected to be close, opposition to the text ultimately was unequivocal. The result echoes the calls for rejection from four Parliamentary committees (see EUROPE 11970 and 11967). The amendment was supported by the S&D, GUE/NGL, Greens/EFA Groups and some members of the EPP and EFDD Groups.
In these latter two groups, the political divide was geographical, with the Western European national delegations tending to be against the text. In the EPP, the Luxembourg, Belgian, French, Austrian and German delegations were believed to be against. The EPP’s CDU/CSU delegation, indeed, had circulated an internal memo highly critical of the proposal (see EUROPE 11960).
With rejection, comes a “silent death”, our Parliamentary source said, the proposal now being condemned to “remain in purgatory” for years to come.
Negotiations in Council are also becoming bogged down. In a joint document, France and Germany have made clear their strong reservations on the text (see EUROPE 11963). (Original version in French by Pascal Hansens)