European Union News - Internal Market

The European Commission agreed to measures that should make a significant contribution to getting some of the EU's most troubled economies back on track. Greece, Ireland, Portugal, Romania, Latvia and Hungary would be asked to contribute less to projects that they currently co-finance with the European Union.

The Commission wants to promote e-procurement in the EU with measures such as a call for applications for participation in a new, informal expert group on e-tendering or monitor the use of e-procurement across Member States. The aim of these measures is to help Member States to accelerate the switchover to e-procurement, and to enable suppliers to take part in online procurement procedures across the single market.

The European Commission published the decision to facilitate deployment of car radar system to boost road safety. This decision extends the authorisation to use the 24 GHz radio frequency band for short-range anti-collision radar in cars until 2018. Only 0.05 % of cars in Europe are equipped with such radar systems, which currently all use the 24 GHz band, and are mainly in luxury car.

According to an annual update published by Eurofound, the actual working week of full-time employees was longer than the average normal collectively agreed working week in almost all EU Member States in 2010. In the EU, the actual working week was 39.7 hours in 2010, 1.7 hours longer than the agreed working week.

Although the use of creosote, a toxic and carcinogenic chemical is banned since 2003 for consumers, is still being used on wooden railway sleepers, electricity poles and in fencing. Accordingly, the European Commission has presented its decision to strengthen the restrictions on its industrial use.

85,000 responses were received to the public consultation on the upcoming revision of the Tobacco Products Directive. The outcome shows that contributions varied significantly. For example, those in favour of mandatory pictorial health warnings stressed that these measures would significantly weaken the advertising effects of the packaging. Opponents, on the other hand, raised legal concerns arguing that these measures would have little or no impact on the uptake of smoking.

The European Commission proposed new legislation that will make the use of jet skis and sailing boats less harmful for European waters. The proposed revision of the Recreational Craft Directive (RCD) sets that propulsion engines will have to be designed and constructed to emit 20% less of HC+NOx emissions and 34% less of particulate matters. The proposal also clarifies some safety requirements.

The European Commission published a report in which shows a remarkable fall of 2.5% in real terms and thus, price differentials for new cars in EU narrowing in 2010. According the Commission, the fall in real car prices across the EU continues a trend observed for more than a decade, which indicates that competition between car manufacturers on the market for new cars is working.

The European Commission published a revision of the tachograph legislation in which it wants to make fraud more difficult and reduce the administrative burden. In addition, in the proposal the Commission also wants to make full use of new technological opportunities such as satellite positioning. With the new measures, the Commission intends to expect to save companies €515 million per year.