Brussels, 23/03/2001 (Agence Europe) - The Member States do not respect, or hardly, the procedure foreseen to limit and repair the economic damage linked to demonstrations and road blocks, accuses the European Commission in a report on the implementation of Regulation (2679/98) also named "Strawberry Regulation".
Called for by the Amsterdam Summit to rapidly answer the serious case of barriers to free movement, the regulation foresees a early warning mechanism, the obligation for the Member States to take the steps necessary and proportionate to ensure the free movement of goods, as well as a Commission action notifying the Member States to take these measures. At the same time, the Member States (which had refused a more binding formula) have undertaken, in a resolution, to rapidly answer any move by the Commission and to ensure the compensation of the individuals affected. This mechanisms was used four times in 1999, notably for the European action day for hauliers in October 1999, and 18 times in 2000, of which three times for Belgium and France, and once for Austria, Italy, Luxembourg, the Netherlands and Sweden. It was also used for port blockades in Spain, France, Greece and in Ireland. The requests for information have also been sent to France and Italy for restrictions to air traffic.
The Commission assessment is overwhelming: 1) with a few rare exceptions, no information has been passed on to the Commission on the strike movements or blockades, while this information was often known publicly a few days before the erecting of the barriers; 2) answers to the requests for information have rarely arrived within the give time of 48 hours or 24 hours for those that are urgent, and the quality of the answers that reached the Commission vary considerably from one Member Sate to another; 3) the Member States have not set up effective compensation procedures as they undertook to do. Most concerned by the blockade operations, France and Italy are the worst: the Commission was forced to bring them into line for not having respected the time frame for providing the information requested, but also for not having sent sufficiently complete information. On the practical level, the Member States dragged their feet before designating the contact points that are needed in the rapid intervention mechanisms and Belgium and Ireland have never done so.
The Commission concluded that due to the lack of cooperation by the Member States, the mechanism is not operational. It proposes three options: 1) maintain the status quo, but with "true cooperation" by the Member States through information in the required time, concise and rapid information, and the adoption of measures to re-establish as quickly as possible the free movement and avoid serious prejudices, 2) a dynamic approach in the implementation of the regulation with the adoption of a vade-mecum specifying the obligations of the Member States, and using the structures in place to further inform the economic operators and social partners, 3) a modification of the regulation to extend and improve the scope, in order to clarify in cases of intervention, create an obligation for information, and introduce an accelerated procedure to refer to the Court of Justice.