Brussels, 02/05/2006 (Agence Europe) - The European Commission will be publishing its spring forecasts for 2006-2008, with figures on inflation, unemployment, rates of employment and public finance, and the finance ministers of the 12 eurozone countries will be meeting on Thursday evening to assess the eurozone's economic health. On Friday, all 25 EU Member States' finance ministers will be discussing economic issues surrounding accession with their counterparts and representatives of the central banks of Bulgaria, Romania, Turkey, Croatia and the Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia (FYROM). They will adopt opinions or conclusions on the pre-accession economic programmes of all five countries except FYROM.
The Council will then hold a preliminary discussion of preparations for the 15 and 16 June Economic Council where heads of state will be setting out a sustainable development strategy for the next five years. This will involve virtually all Council formations, which will be looking at targets, indicators and monitoring procedures.
The Commission will submit to the finance ministers the preliminary draft budget it is due to adopt on Wednesday (see related article) and an action plan to improve the Court of Auditors' budget control procedures.
The ministers will attempt to define political guidelines on three items of legislation in the pipeline - two directives and a regulation - designed to simplify Value Added Tax (VAT) obligations for companies with cross-border business (see EUROPE 9065). The most important measure in the package is establishing a fully electronic, optional, one-stop shop to help the enterprises in question comply with all their VAT obligations in a single country - the Member State where they are established. This would reduce the number of compulsory declarations and deadlines..
The ECOFIN Council will also adopt conclusions concerning financial services, covering cross-border mergers and acquisitions. In November 2005, the European Commission published a report identifying structural, legal, fiscal and political barriers to consolidation in financial services, and suggesting amendments to the banking and insurance directives (see EUROPE 9067 and 9061). The Council's other conclusions will cover the European Commission's White Paper of December 2005 (see EUROPE 9082) and harmonising controls in the financial industry.
In the light of a French document, the ministers will discuss how to improve access to public procurement contracts for small and medium-sized companies (SMEs). At the Vienna Council, the French finance minister Thierry Breton asked his colleagues to consider 'common rules' to make it easier for SMEs to access public procurements markets (see EUROPE 9171). He mooted the idea of an EU Small Business Act, along the lines of a US law of the same name that reserves a share of public procurement markets to national SMEs. Bringing in legislation of this ilk at EU level would, however, require renegotiation of the Public Procurement Markets Agreement at the World Trade Organisation.