European Union News - Internal Market

The European Commission adopted its first 'health check', a biannual overview on the functioning of the Schengen area, which shows that, among other findings, the pressure at the Schengen external borders is focused on a limited number of hot spots, in particular the Eastern Mediterranean route via Turkey to Greece. The report is accompanied by guidelines which seek to ensure a coherent interpretation and implementation of the selected issues.

Siim Kallas, Commission Vice-President responsible for transport, visited Turkey to enhance transport cooperation between the EU and Turkey. According to the Commission, developing EU-Turkey transport cooperation is very important due to its strategic geographical position at the crossroad between Europe and Middle East and Caucasus.

Economic and Financial Ministers of the EU reached an agreement on the so-called "CRD 4" package, which amends the EU's rules on capital requirements for banks and investments firms. The negotiations with MEPs will aim for adoption of the package at first reading, if possible by June 2012. For its part, MEPs already stressed that bank capital requirements must be strengthened to make banks more risk-resilient and the risk weighting of loans to small firms must be reduced to facilitate lending to the real economy.

The European Investment Bank (EIB) has granted two loan to two Spanish banks for 200 million each with the aim at financing investment projects of small and medium-sized businesses mainly in the industry and service sectors. Furthermore, a substantial part of the loan will go to projects located in convergence regions.

The interim Economic Partnership Agreement that provides duty and quota free access to the EU market for exports from Mauritius, Madagascar, Seychelles and Zimbabwe, has started to be applied from 14 of May. This Agreement also covers provisions on rules of origin, development cooperation, fisheries, trade defence instruments and dispute settlement.

The Economic and Monetary Affairs Committee adopted two texts with a slim majority stating MEPs position on the economic governance "two pack". The vote was not without acrimony as centre left and centre right groups were divided on whether the timing was right for a vote. Thus, a decision was then taken not to open negotiations with the Council and instead turn to the plenary to test the level of backing of the whole house.

The European Commission has published a set of guidelines for Member States with the aim to prevent discriminatory treatment by road charging systems put in place in some states against foreign. These guidelines are intended to unify the criteria used by member states where such plans are already being used and those where they are in the way to be implemented.

Eurostat published the 16th edition of its yearbook which presents a comprehensive selection of the statistical data. Among the figures report there are data on statistics, as for example that 79% of citizens aged 20 to 24 in the EU had completed at least upper secondary education in 2010.

The Spring forecast 2012-13 published by the European Commission shows that the EU economy is estimated to be currently in a mild recession, following the output contraction in late 2011. However, it is expected an acceleration in global growth, and thus it is foreseen a slowly recovery in the second half of the year on.

According to the judgement of the Court of Justice of the EU, the Netherlands failed to fulfil its obligations under the Directive on the award of public contracts because the province of North Holland laid down in the technical specifications (which determine the subject-matter of the contract) that certain specific labels used already for such province, or at least, labels based on comparable or identical criteria concerning the tea or coffee to be supplied should be used.

The European Parliament adopted a regulation which will sharply fall the cost of using mobile phones, smartphones and tablets when travelling abroad within the EU. In addition, the regulation will enable clients to buy roaming services from suppliers other than their home service suppliers and open up the market to new entrants, so as to boost competition and thus reduce prices.

The Council adopted a directive aimed a creating a system for the interconnection of central, commercial and companies registers and at improving access to up-to-date and trustworthy information on companies. The new rules are a response to the increasing demand for access to information on companies in a cross-border context.