Brussels, 23/09/2005 (Agence Europe) - The European Centre of Enterprises with Public Participation (CEEP) expresses in a press release its very deep concern about the slide in the political debate toward questioning the very foundations of services of general interest (SGI) and entering into conflict with acquis communautaire arising from the treaties and jurisprudence of the Court of Justice. It thus reacts to the own-initiative vote at the committee on economic and monetary affairs on the proposal for a directive on services in the internal market (see EUROPE 9029). CEEP urges for SGIs, whether or not they are of an economic kind, to be excluded from the scope of the directive to be voted early October in the EP's internal market committee. The CEEP recalls that the Court of Justice of the EU has taken a clear stance on the conditions of compatibility of the authorisation regimes as a means to impose a public service obligation. It went on to ask: Why want to maintain a useless bureaucracy at any cost through the mutual assessment process and the notification obligation of these specific authorisation regimes that are a burden on social and local SGIs?