Clock ticking for single market action plan

Date: 20/11/1997

By Leyla Linton

INTERNAL market ministers will avoid being too precise about the timing of a single market joint work programme for the remainder of the Luxembourg presidency and its UK and Austrian successors when they discuss the plan next week.

Instead, they will focus their discussions next Thursday (27 November) on a rolling work programme, with the exact priorities for each presidency determined by what was achieved by its predecessor.

The aim of the work programme is to implement the European Commission's single market action plan to the greatest extent possible by 1 January 1999.

The Council of Ministers acknowledges that there is not much time available and progress will require close cooperation between the Council and the Commission as well as support from the European Parliament.

At their meeting next week, ministers will discuss ways of filling gaps in existing single market legislation, improving and strengthening it where there are weaknesses and simplifying the rules both at EU and national level to make them more 'user friendly' and effective.

The first aim of the action plan is to ensure existing rules are properly applied, with legislation agreed in Brussels fully implemented in national capitals and better enforced.

Specific areas singled out for priority action during the Luxembourg presidency include the legal protection of biotechnological inventions, which is likely to be agreed at next week's meeting; gas market liberalisation, which will be discussed again at a gathering of energy ministers on 8 December; and the European Company Statute, on which there has been little progress so far because of a seemingly intractable dispute between Germany and the UK over whether trade union representatives should be allowed to sit on company boards.

During the UK presidency, the focus is expected to be on public procurement, mutual recognition, standards, patents and reform of the EU's transit system.

Ministers are particularly anxious to achieve concrete results on the integration of service markets and state aids during the early part of 1998.

New legislation to be discussed during the first half of the year includes rules on medical devices, motor vehicles, insurance, the legal protection of designs and the third directive on the mutual recognition of qualifications.

But a new 'scoreboard' published by the European Commission this week has once again highlighted the extent to which member states' failure to put laws agreed in Brussels on to their statute books is hampering the single market.

The progress report shows that Denmark is top of the implementation league, with only 3.2% of EU single market laws still awaiting transposition into national legislation, while Austria comes bottom with a 10.1% non-implementation rate, closely followed by Germany on 8.5%.

Meanwhile, a survey of Union business executives published this week found that while the benefits expected from the single market were beginning to feed through into the economy and trade, a quarter of those questioned continued to face obstacles in trading across borders.