On the occasion of the 30th anniversary of the Single Market, the European Commission published two communications on Thursday 16 March: one to celebrate the anniversary and the other setting out ways to ensure the EU’s long-term competitiveness.
Although the single market has benefited citizens, businesses and the EU as a whole in economic, social and geopolitical terms, the Commission considered that common efforts still need to be pursued. The aim is to explore and find solutions to better exploit its benefits.
“The Single market is extremely important [...], we will continue to fight against its fragmentation” Commissioner for the Internal Market Thierry Breton told a press conference. He said the single market working group was “very effective” and would “continue to be developed”.
According to the Commissioner, the remaining barriers to the single market come from the Member States. He also referred to “the value chains that run through the internal market and make it strong and robust, but also sometimes weak”. He therefore felt that “care should be taken to study them, both internally and externally”.
Long-term competitiveness
This anniversary and the disruption caused by the Covid-19 pandemic and Russia’s aggression against Ukraine have pushed European leaders to look beyond crisis management to build a robust, future-proof economy that guarantees long-term prosperity.
In its conclusions of December 2022, the European Council asked the Commission to present an EU-level strategy to boost competitiveness and productivity (see EUROPE 13090/8).
The Commission has proposed several lines of action in a sustained effort of structural improvements, well-targeted investments and regulatory measures. This long-term vision is built around nine mutually reinforcing axes: - a functioning single market; - access to private capital and investment; - public investment and infrastructure; - research and innovation; - energy; - circularity; - digitalisation; - education and skills; - trade and open strategic autonomy.
A second strand of action is to actively work towards a regulatory framework more suited for competitiveness and growth, suggesting some priority areas.
A monitoring framework composed by 17 Key Performance Indicators will also be put in place. These indicators will be accompanied by targets and will measure the EU’s improvements in each of the dimensions of competitiveness.
“In future we will be guided by a series of key performance indicators, which can tell us whether Europe’s economy is really becoming more productive and competitive. Because what gets measured gets done”, said Ursula von der Leyen, President of the European Commission, in a statement.
For its part, the European association of craft, small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs), ‘SMEunited’, issued a press release critical of the fact that it found only one reference to SMEs in the action plan for the application of the Single Market rules. “SMEunited signals that the work is not done and an impactful SME Relief Package must be developed”, the association added.
To read the Commission’s Communication on the Single Market: https://aeur.eu/f/5us
And the one on long-term competitiveness: https://aeur.eu/f/5ut (Original version in French by Anne Damiani)