On Tuesday 9 June, the Cyprus Presidency of the EU Council and the European Parliament reached a new provisional political agreement on one of the four proposals in the ‘Omnibus IV’ package, namely the proposals on digitalisation and common specifications.
On Wednesday 3 June, an agreement had already been reached on one part of the package (see EUROPE 13881/5), and another strand was still due to be the subject of fresh negotiations on Tuesday 9 June.
These various strands are intended to extend certain mitigation and support measures designed for small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) to small mid-cap companies (SMCs).
SMEs/SMCs are now defined as companies with fewer than 1,000 employees and either turnover below €200 million or total assets below €172 million.
The new category - and the exemptions associated with SMEs - will be introduced into the following texts: - record-keeping obligations under the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) when processing data that does not present a high risk to the rights of the data subject; - Prospectus Regulation, to benefit from simplified prospectus disclosure rules; - Batteries Regulation, where the turnover threshold for due diligence exemptions is raised from €150 million to €200 million; - registration obligations under the F-gases Regulation; - trade defence instruments in anti-dumping and anti-subsidy investigations, including access to the SME and SMC Helpdesk and the associated procedural simplifications. (Original version in French by Solenn Paulic)