Citizens’ rights and the EU single market

Students of European affairs will tell you that the single market is at the very core of the EU raison d’etre. Yet, many European citizens are disillusioned by what the single market is doing to improve their lives.

The five freedoms granted by the single market, free movement of people, goods, services, capital and knowledge, will mean little to ordinary people unless their concerns about the weaknesses of the single market are addressed effectively by the European Commission. The revitalising of the single market could become a reality soon thanks to a ground-breaking report – Delivering A Single Market To Consumers And Citizens – compiled by MEP Louis Grech.

This report received widespread support from three European Commissioners: Michel Barnier, Commissioner for Internal Market and Services, Antonio Tajani, Commissioner of Industry and Entrepreneurship, and John Dalli, Commissioner for Health and Consumer Policy. It also provided a helpful contribution to former Commissioner Mario Monti in the compilation of another report on the relaunch of the EU single market.

The main thrust of the Grech Report is that “the single market should provide benefits for consumers in terms of better quality, greater variety, reasonable prices, and safety of goods and services”. But it goes beyond this. Greater efforts must also be made ‘to facilitate SMEs development and to enable them to take full advantage of their entrepreneurial potential.’

The report has been incorporated in the agenda of the Belgian presidency that ends in December 2010. Commissioner Barnier has declared that a White Paper on the Single Market Act will be published in October. The Act will draw heavily on the recommendations made in the reports by Mr Grech and Mr Monti and will cover both legislative and non-legislative initiatives, aimed at creating a highly competitive social market and green economy.

The Single Market Act is expected to address the issue of a Citizens’ Charter that will encompass various facets of a citizen’s right to live and work anywhere in the EU, a proposal which Mr Barnier has described as ‘no easy task’, but nonetheless ‘an excellent idea’. The European Consumers Organisation welcomed the initiatives proposed in the Grech Report and insisted with Commissioner Barnier that the Single Market Act, which should be enacted in 2011, “should give priority to consumer friendly initiatives”. It went on to say: “We would like to see specific measures in the Act which aim at integrating consumer interest into the relevant EU policies.”

When addressing the European Parliament on May 20 Louis Grech encapsulated his views on the need for renewal in the single market by stating: “Europe needs to develop strategies for 2020 which would enable the market to be the main catalyst in the economic recovery, and at the same time would be accepted by citizens as championing their interests and by consumers as protecting their rights and by SMEs as giving them the right incentives.”

The validity of these comments was confirmed by former Commissioner Monti when he stressed that a broader and stronger consensus on the single market was needed “in order to create a highly competitive social market economy by conciliating the economic freedoms with workers’ rights and applying single market rules to social services of general interest”.

Following the publication of the Grech Report, and in order to help identify the issues that are of greatest concern to EU citizens, Commissioner Barnier commissioned a preliminary study to list the 20 areas with potential for progress in the single market. The findings of this study will be discussed in another article.

Local consumers associations and the Chamber of Small and Medium Enterprise (GRTU) will no doubt make a valid contribution with their own suggestions on what needs to be done to put the citizen and small enterprises at the centre of the EU single market. If citizens, consumers and SMEs rights are to really become the focus of the single market, a determined approach will be needed by the European Commission that must be prepared to spend a good deal of its time and political capital on implementing this ambitious agenda.

EU citizens are understandably suspicious of grand initiatives, if they perceive a lack of political commitment to deliver the promised changes. Hopefully the EU’s political commitment to focus more on citizens’ rights in the single market will not be lacking.

jcassarwhite@yahoo.com