A group of fourteen Member States sent a letter to the European Commission on Tuesday 21 January, in particular to Internal Market Commissioner Thierry Breton, setting out a series of recommendations to strengthen and improve the functioning of the internal market.
In their letter, obtained by EUROPE, the co-signatory Member States (Belgium, Czech Republic, Denmark, Estonia, Finland, Latvia, Lithuania, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, Poland, Portugal, Slovakia, Slovenia and Sweden) hammer home a message: one of the main priorities of the new European Commission must remain the improvement of the implementation of European single market rules and their respect by Member States.
They therefore ask the Commission to focus on existing implementation gaps with each new measure envisaged, based in particular on impact assessments carried out with national authorities, the business community, trade unions, civil society and citizens.
For them, these impact studies should not focus so much on the cost of implementation, but on the implementation itself. In addition, they call for implementation plans that go beyond a simple timetable to focus on the practical application of the legislative act.
Strengthening the digital single portal
The digital single portal (see EUROPE 12026/15) plays a key role in the proposals put forward. The co-signatory States suggest a revision of the structure of the implementation groups to better coordinate and streamline the functioning of the internal market. These groups should be set up by the Commission in conjunction with national experts and with reinforced peer review, always favouring informal dialogue rather than the threat of sanctions. They would like to extend the single digital gateway model for geo-blocking.
They also call for "toolboxes" with "concise and operational" guidelines, "in non-legal language" for national authorities and economic operators, with online monitoring of the implementation of the different legislative acts Member State by Member State. These online toolkits would be accessible through the single digital portal.
A review of the annual scoreboard on the state of the single market is also called for, in order to provide guidance on the implementation of each legislative act, which would also include a "qualitative" dimension, based on interviews with various stakeholders, which, according to them, is the only way of obtaining a "more realistic" picture of the state of the single market.
They also consider it necessary to improve the SOLVIT system, the network for resolving problems in the implementation of European law in the internal market, by creating an area for informal dialogue.
This would involve better training of staff, but also an extension of its mandate to report problems - again in relation to the single digital portal. They also call for a relaunch of the ‘EU Pilot’, a mechanism for resolving problems of compliance of national law with Community law without going through an infringement proceeding.
The Commission is due to present a long-term action plan on the implementation and strengthening of the single market on 4 March, together with the industrial and SME strategy. (Original version in French by Pascal Hansens)