Examination of Witnesses (Questions 392
- 399)
THURSDAY 13 DECEMBER 2007
Mr Jean-Claude Thebault, Mr Michel Servoz, Mr Marcel
Haag, Ms Jacqueline Minor and Ms Elizabeth Golberg
Q392 Chairman: Good morning,
Mr Thebault, to you and your colleagues. Thank you for agreeing
to see us today.
Mr Thebault: First of all, I would like to thank
you for your visit and to welcome you to the Berlaymont for this
meeting. Thank you also for the interest you manifest for the
Single Market Review which the Commission adopted a few weeks
ago and which is a very important part of our political agenda
for this year and the coming years. I will not make a speech because
I think you have many questions to ask which we will try to answer
as well as possible. First of all we must not forget that the
single market has been a huge success but also that Europe and
the world are changing and so we must adapt and change the single
market at the same time. Much has been done and it is an ongoing
process, of course, but we must not be complacent because there
is still much untapped potential, especially for consumers and
small business and this is what our future single market policy
will focus on primarily. We want to make the single market more
effective than it is today, and now with 27 Member States ensuring
the single market works across the Union presents, of course,
new challenges. Clearly we cannot do everything from Brussels,
nor has it ever been our intention to do so. We intend to work
in partnership with Member States. This is crucial in order to
put a more effective system in place. You mentioned this yourselves
and you will have a meeting with DG Internal Market this afternoon,
but our experience, for instance, with SOLVIT, shows that many
problems can be solved at a local level quickly and effectively
without having to engage in very heavy procedural claims in Brussels.
The fewer claims we have the happier we are because it is not
our objective to manage infringements. Just to conclude my introductory
remarks, what we have done is primarily to reinforce and give
more prominence to consumers and small businesses. We have had
very good successes with big business but there is huge potential
now for small businesses and citizens, because citizens are not
really aware of what the single market is. They know that there
are no more frontiers and so on but they do not realise how the
single market benefits them. These are some elements which I wanted
to stress at the beginning of our discussion. And now, we are
in your hands.
Q393 Chairman: First may I
thank you for allowing us to come to visit you and your colleagues.
It is much appreciated. There are five members of the Committee,
our shorthand writer and our two Clerks. We set out on this inquiry
a year ago, anticipating the Commission's review, and we intend
to conclude our work after Christmas and report in February before
the Spring Council and my intention is to seek a debate on the
floor of the House of Lords on the report. May I say that, having
read the Commission's document, we are strongly in agreement and
strongly supportive.
Mr Thebault: That is good news.
Q394 Chairman: There are one
or two nuances of difference but we find ourselves in substantial
agreement, which I hope will be helpful. Each of us has a question.
May I start by asking about the implementation of directives and
regulations, and specifically about the single market? Now we
are beginning to call it the Common Market again—I saw the
picture on the way in of Ted Heath signing the accession treaty.
My question is about implementation. What can we do to make sure
that all 27 Member nations, as quickly as possible, with the help
perhaps of the Commission and the Parliament, implement the provisions
of the single market? We feel in the United Kingdom that we tend
to press ahead very quickly. Sometimes the criticism is what we
call gold-plating or over-regulating, but at least I hope we have
a good record in implementation. How can we ensure that it really
is a common market by everyone proceeding at the same pace?
Mr Thebault: This is a very broad question with
no easy answer. This is one of the main purposes of this paper,
to reinforce what we call this partnership with the Member States,
because we have a good partnership but it can be improved. What
we want is to work with Member States and help Member States toimprove
the way they apply and above all enforce the single market rules.
This is an incremental process and we must adopt best practices
and first achievements as a mechanism but maybe my colleagues
could complement what I say.
Ms Minor: We already employ a number of different
techniques to try and encourage timely and satisfactory implementation
of directives. You will have heard of the single market scoreboard,
which is a process of naming and shaming, and we are in the process
of preparing the next edition which should be published in January
and which is good news on the implementation front because it
will show another significant improvement.
Q395 Chairman: Can I just
ask when in January? Would it be in time for our report in February?
Ms Minor: I think so. When is your cut-off date?
Q396 Chairman: It may well
be 21 January.
Ms Minor: I think it will be before then but
I am sure we can arrange to provide you with some provisional
figures if necessary before publication.
Q397 Chairman: That would
be helpful.
Ms Minor: That, if you like, is an instrument
of moral suasion more than anything else. We also produced in
2004 a Council recommendation on best practice in terms of implementation.
I think there were 22 separate sub-recommendations, and in the
last scoreboard, the one of January last year, we followed up
that recommendation and found that there was a very positive correlation
between the Member States which had acted upon it and those with
the best records in terms of implementation. What we are now looking
forward to is a number of things, the first of which is more active
co-operation in the implementation process. If one takes the example
of the Services Directive, which will be key to the future success
of the single market, we are working very closely with Member
States in developing common approaches to the difficult questions
which arise in the transposition of that directive, for example,
the single points of contact which have to be established, so
there are bilateral and multilateral meetings to discuss that.
We have produced a handbook for the national authorities responsible
for transposition and we are also putting at their disposal—and
I think this will be more and more the role of the Commission—an
IT system which will enable them to exchange, in a structured
form, the kind of data that they will need in order to apply the
directive, and I see this as a kind of prototype of the way the
Commission might behave in the future. Finally, one of the readouts
from the Single Market Review is work on this further recommendation
which will look at the stage after transposition in the day-to-day
application of Community rules, and we want to work in a similar
way to the 2004 recommendation, namely, collection of best practice,
or rather good practice (the situation is too diverse to be able
to identify best practice) which we can then put into a document
which will enable it to be shared and stated and followed up in
Member States from the single market point of view.
Ms Golberg: My Lord Chairman, you will recall
last July when you were here Mr Nymand Christensen mentioned that
we were working on a communication on the application of law,and
in September the Commission adopted that communication. I do not
know if you have had the possibility to look at it, but basically
the communication outlines a number of ways in which we will work
in partnership with Member States on improving the application
of law implementation in general. It takes, shall I say, a lifecycle
approach: pre preparing proposals we are committed to doing impact
assessments. As you know, we have set up a system of impact assessments
and one of the critical features in that process is to look at
how laws will be applied down the road, so very much coming in
at the early stages to see if we can anticipate implementation
issues. Beyond that the communication calls for prevention measures,
looking at how we can solve problems rather than having only the
legal reflex, if you like. The SOLVIT system is very important
for internal market questions of a cross-border nature. What we
are suggesting and setting up at the present time is a pilot exercise
covering various areas—environment, single market and so
on—where 12 Member States who have volunteered for the pilot
will set up a single contact point in the Member State. It will
be a hands-on pilot. We will test it for a year to see if it works.
Of course, if there are infringements of law we will have to go
to court but we want to see if we can sort things out before issues
develop into legal infringement proceedings. Part of that whole
package, and I think this is important, is the exchange of information.
We have had a discussion with Member States on what we call correlation
tables, seeing how our directives are indeed transposed and applied
in the national law, and it is very important not only for us,
obviously, but also for citizens to know how the legal frameworks
relate one to another. We also think it is important to have more
communication on what issues are being raised, where the problems
lie and at what stage of the process we, as a public service,
either out of court or in court, are in dealing with them, so
there is a big transparency information exchange aspect there
which I think is important, not just for single market legislation
but across the board. I think it will be interesting for the Committee
to have a look at that document as well to see how we intend to
take forward application of law across the board.
Chairman: We have had a preliminary look
at that. All that is very helpful, and what we propose to do in
February is have our report sent to colleagues in the European
Parliament. They may not agree with us, but where we are supportive
(and certainly on implementation from what we have heard we are
strongly supportive) it may be helpful.
Q398 Lord Paul: The Single
Market Review, and you also said this in your opening remarks,
refers to a commitment to keep legislation simple and roll back
EU intervention where it is no longer necessary. We applaud this
commitment. On the other hand, you know, there is a lot of scepticism
about whether it is possible. We would like to know how you intend
to achieve it.
Mr Thebault: This is part of what we call better
regulation and this is something which is a priority for this
Commission and for President Barroso. It is not just an intention.
It is a reality today. We have programmes of simplification and
every proposal we do is based on an impact assessment. This was
the case in the past but it was not systematic. Now every proposal
must be really justified in terms of efficiency, benefits, including
environmental, social, economic and so on. It happened that some
impact assessments showed that proposals were not necessary, so
there is a big change. We are not in a period where we have to
issue many directives or regulations. What we have to do is to
be really sure that they are well implemented and enforced. This
is one of the main issues we have to face. The scoreboard is very
important in that way, and I was asking Jackie where we are now.
There has been very good progress in Member States on this. This
is, I would say, a new culture in the European Commission. We
propose legislation where necessary and where really justified
but there are other means for achieving our policy, using self-regulation
or self-law. When it fails—and sometimes it happens—okay,
it is our responsibility to propose something. People who have
been around the Commission for many years still have in mind the
period when we were building the single market and we had so many
directives. Times are changing and sometimes people are not, but
we also have to take this into account in our relations, for instance,
with the European Parliament because there are other ways in which
to work, not just the statutory process. We are convinced that
enforcement and implementation are real priorities but there are
certainly other ways to develop our policies than just regulatory
measures, and we must also explain this. Business, understand
this very well but not everybody does, but we will continue. I
can assure you that this is our strong intention. I do not know
if my colleagues want to add something on this.
Mr Servoz: Perhaps I will add one word on the
administrative burden where we have a programme to reduce the
administrative burden by 25%. We are not doing it alone. We are
doing it with Member States and Member States have been asked
to set national targets to reduce the administrative burden. This
is for existing legislation but it is also for new legislation
which means that we try to provide reporting requirements which
are done electronically by comparison to reporting on paper and
this is meant to help businesses and citizens in their daily task.
That is quite important also with a view to having better regulation.
If I can make a point about keeping the legislation simple, it
is also about making sure that the legislation is implemented
properly and there we are monitoring transposition very carefully.
In the context of the Lisbon strategy we have an indicator about
the transposition deficit, as what we call it, and we monitor
how Member States are performing vis-a"-vis this transposition
deficit and if they do not perform well we issue a recommendation
on the specific aspects, which is then submitted to the Council
for adoption. There are a number of Member States where we are
making such recommendations for the next Spring Council.
Ms Golberg: I was just going to add on the simplification
programme that this has been a very high priority for this Commission
and this President. The Commission has moved ahead and tabled
many proposals. Of course, we are in an inter-institutional relationship.
We will be tabling within the next couple of months our annual
review of better regulation, and one thing we will be calling
for is for the Council and the Parliament to try and handle these
simplification proposals before the end of the term. The Commission
is only one step in the process. To see real results the proposals
need to be adopted and implemented on the ground. Certainly the
intention is there—it is reflected in the fact that we have
the programme. Now the process needs to go further by seeing the
adoption of the proposals by the co-legislator. Just to illustrate
one area where there has been rough simplification outside the
internal market area is the single farm payment, so there I think
there has been a real effort to simplify for farmers. I think
that in the e-customs area there has been a very strong effort
to diminish the administrative burden and make things easier when
it comes to customs processing for businesses. It is always more
interesting when you can give an example of what it looks like
from the SME's point of view and the citizen's point of view,
and hopefully we will have more success stories in the next few
years as things are implemented, but I think there are a few areas
where there are already impacts being seen.
Lord Paul: We are delighted to know about
this progress because one of the recommendations in our report
is likely to be that the first step should be the implementation
of the present regulation, so if you can get us a little bit more
information by January we would love to look at it.
Q399 Chairman: Absolutely.
Mr Thebault: Of course.
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