A legislative initiative will be proposed on the external public markets, which would allow awarding authorities to refuse under certain conditions an offer from a submitting third-country company that did not respect the World Trade Organisation agreement on public markets or a bilateral agreement in the sector.

Next month, the Commission will also propose an initiative on intellectual property rights with an essentially technical revision of the current regulation on brands; the idea is to improve the functioning of the regulation for the future.

After the summer, the Commission will launch an initiative to modernise the current directive on the collective management of intellectual property rights; the objective is to bring the directive more in line with the evolution of technology and of society, and to make applications by rights users run more smoothly by giving them a single interlocutor. The Services Directive will also be examined before the summer, since some member states have transposed it but have not taken the necessary measures to apply it concretely.

In spring 2012, the Commission will take stock of the progress made on all fronts and will present its programme for the next step, namely the twelve new key areas for growth; these should become a concrete reality by the summer of 2013.

The Commission’s considerations will be fed by a large-scale economic study, the results of which should help to identify any areas with still unexploited growth potential.