The Competitiveness Council meeting ended with an agreement among ministers regarding the “COSME programme”. All delegations underlined the importance of the programme to contribute to alleviate the credit crunch conditions for European business provoked by the economic crisis. The agreement paves the way to start negotiations on the programme with the European Parliament for its timely adoption.

The essential elements of the Competitiveness of Enterprises and SMEs programme (the "COSME programme" presented by the Commission in December 2011) for the years 2014-2020 were agreed by the Council on the meeting celebrated on the 30 of May. The delegations agreed on the principles of achieving simplified procedures and the need to avoid unnecessary administrative burden when implementing the provisions of the programme.

In particular, in priority areas of the Single Market Act, which is designed to increase confidence in the internal market and to stimulate growth and jobs creation, the Council agreed on a general approach for the establishment of alternative dispute resolution mechanisms and an online dispute resolution platform to strengthen consumers' confidence in both domestic and cross-border transactions; provided political orientation on the modernisation of the public procurement policy and on the revision of the recognition of professional qualifications; held a preparatory debate in order to gather consensus on the location of the seat for establishing a unified patent court, with a view to a successful decision on the seat by the European Council at its meeting on 28-29 June 2012; and adopted conclusions on the governance of the single market and the digital single market.

According to the Council, the COSME programme seeks to address market failures affecting the competitiveness of the Union economy on a global scale and which undermine the capacity of enterprises, in particular SMEs, to compete with their counterparts in other parts of the world. The future multi-annual programme will focus mainly on measures to promote more dynamic and internationally-competitive SMEs.