European Union News - Internal Market

The report presented by a High Level Group recommends a gradual opening of EU road haulage market. The High Level Group considers that allowing a step-by-step opening of the market will increase the flexibility of operations and competition in national markets, whilst ensuring fair competition and maintaining adequate social norms.

The adoption of the draft directive establishing a single European railway area is closer following the agreement reached between the Council and the European Parliament negotiators. The compromise was endorsed on 19 of June by the within the Permanent  Representatives Committee. To enter into force, the text still needs to be formally approved by Parliament and the Council. The purpose of the draft directive is to increase competition, strengthen market supervision and improve conditions for investment in the Europe's railway sector.

The European Commission's Digital Agenda (DAE) Scoreboard confirms the need for structural economic reform across Europe and surplus of ICT jobs; big trend towards mobile services and technology. On the other hand, it also confirms that broadband is nearly ubiquitous in Europe and consumers and businesses are moving fast to mobile.

The European Investment Bank (EIB) has granted a €100 million loan to Banco Santander for financing the investment projects mainly in the industrial and service sectors of mid-cap companies (with up to 3,000 employees). This is the EIB’s first operation with Banco Santander specifically targeting mid-caps.

Commissioner Antonio Tajani announced a series of new initiatives and planned actions to improve access of SMEs to finance, to boost entrepreneurship and to go international. These actions comprise a guide providing information to improve SMEs access to funding, an European wide training campaign for the Enterprise Europe Network to help SMEs get access to finance, and the launching of a call for proposals to select new IPR Helpdesks in the ASEAN and MERCOSUR countries to help European SMEs to expand their activities to these regions.

The European Parliament adopted its position on the so-called "two pack". MEPs agreed that next round of economic governance legislation must be geared more towards growth. In addition, they added to the initial Commission's proposal a new chapter on coordinating debt issuance, including the partial pooling of Eurozone debt, and legal protection for countries about to default. With this plenary mandate, Parliament's negotiators will enter into talks with them in order to reach a deal on the legislation with the Council.

The recommendations presented on the CARS 21 report include actions such as providing EU financing for research, managing the sector's costs by applying the principles of smart regulation and supporting the internationalisation of EU industry. On the other hand, the report sets out a complete vision for the automotive industry in 2020 providing recommendations for rapid progress on important subjects such as electro-mobility or road safety.

The European Court of Auditors’ (ECA) performance audit presented that assessed the progress achieved to date on the reform of the common organisation of the market in wine makes a set of recommendations to the European Commission. The Court considers among other things that the aid rates were set at too high levels and that the scheme could therefore have been more efficient by achieving more significant results with the resources made available.

The European Commission welcomed the general approach reached by Ministers on airport noise. It particularly thanked the Danish Presidency for its energetic management of the Better Airports proposals. Among other things, the new rules will more clearly identify all actors in the noise assessment process with their respective rights and obligations. The proposal must still be voted by the European Parliament in first reading, and then to be approved by the Council.

In a statement published on 9 of June, the Eurogroup highlighted its support to the Spanish authorities to address the restructuring of its financial sector. Also, it confirmed that the financial assistance would be provided by the EFSF/ESM for recapitalisation of financial institutions; and the loan amount is estimated that would be €100 billion in total.

The European Commission adopted a course of action to ensure that Single Market rules work better in practice. Among the measures proposed, it is also proposing measures to improve the way the services sector works because is vital as the Services Directive accounts for more than 45% of EU GDP. In addition to this, it suggest to focus efforts on sectors with the largest growth potential, which would be services and network industries in 2012-2013.