The Swedish Presidency of the Council of the EU is trying to translate Member States’ grievances on the Single Market Emergency Instrument (SMEI) into a compromise text that it submitted to the Competitiveness and Growth Working Group on 31 March. This working document, which reflects the comments previously made by the EU27, aims to reduce the scope of the future SMEI instrument (see EUROPE 13032/1).
Several member countries had expressed their fears of too much interventionism on the part of the European Commission through this instrument. The Swedish authorities have therefore tightened the definitions and conditions that lead to the triggering of one of the three intervention levels of the instrument (planning, vigilance and emergency).
A “crisis” situation thus “has or may have a severe negative impact on the functioning of the Single Market”, according to the compromise, a copy of which was made available to EUROPE. By its own definition, the Commission had only focused on the origin of the crisis.
The Swedish Presidency proposes to reduce the scope of interventions that would be triggered by the future instrument. This would mean that Member States would not be obliged to exchange information with the Commission on “all matters falling within the scope of this Regulation”, for example.
Similarly, the EU27 would not be obliged to provide the Commission with information on their strategic reserves of “goods of strategic importance”. The Swedish Presidency proposes to delete all elements of the text relating to these reservations. On the basis of the information in its possession, the Commission could only recommend that Member States “distribute these crisis-relevant goods or services in a targeted way”.
Economic operators are also spared. The Presidency-in-Office of the Council proposes to relax the parts of the text that concern them.
In a situation of severe shortages linked to a crisis or risk of shortage, the Commission initially wanted to invite economic operators active in the relevant supply chains to provide relevant information. It even provided for the possibility of obliging them to do so in certain cases, with the threat of fines.
The compromise text puts two options on the table to change these provisions. Both options allow companies to derogate more or less from this kind of obligation.
The authors of the compromise also propose to remove the possibility for the Commission to impose “priority rated orders” on economic operators.
Finally, they look at public procurement procedures managed by the Commission on behalf of several Member States. Above all, the compromise is to strengthen the role and involvement of the countries participating in these joint public procurement exercises.
See the compromise: https://aeur.eu/f/66h (Original version in French by Léa Marchal)