The Single Market Act proposed by MEP Louis Grech in a European Parliament Report on "Delivering a Single Market Act to consumers and citizens" has been taken on board by the European Commission as part of its action plan.
The Commission is today expected to unveil a raft of legislative and non-legislative proposals aimed at strengthening the Single Market in particular by re-launching competitiveness, removing barriers to intra-EU trade, reinforcing external trade and restoring the European public's confidence.
Two of MEP Grech's hallmark proposals include a Citizen’s Charter – where the focus of the Single Market will now be shifted onto the 500 million citizens of the union - and an emphasis on the social dimension of the EU’s Single Market.
He also proposed an exercise to identify the Top 20 sources of frustration related to the Single Market that citizens encounter every day.
Following the presentation of his report last May, Internal Market Commissioner Michel Barnier had praised the many initiatives taken by Mr Grech and promised that “many of the elements in the Grech report will be taken up by the Commission.”
In his report, approved overwhelmingly by the EP, Mr Grech had called for "a more holistic approach" to the EU internal market that takes full account of citizens' concerns. He called for specific measures to ensure that single market policy focuses on consumer interests and citizens' rights, improves consumer and small business access to e-commerce and digital markets, support the development of an inclusive, low-carbon, green, and knowledge-based economy, protect services of general economic interest and create a strategy for better communicating the single market's benefits.
A draft of the new proposals, seen by timesofmalta.com, shows that the Commission is planning to launch a communication entitled "Citizens First" for the end of 2010 that will strive to identify and do away with the remaining obstacles faced by citizens.
The Commission also intends to restore citizens' confidence by removing the barriers they continue to encounter in practice, whether unjustified discrimination against consumers, impediments to access to banking services or obstacles to the mobility of workers or retired people.
According to the Grech report, the Single Market Act will serve as one of the primal building blocks for a renewed Single European Market. SME and Consumer Organisations have tagged the Grech report as 'fundamental for any relaunch of the Single Market' and many of its proposals are to form part of the EU 2020 Agenda as well as IMCO's work programme for the next few years.
Mr Grech's argument for new thinking in the approach to the Single Market, one which would ensure that the Single Market would work for the citizen and not the other way around, has received wide support from various stakeholders and bodies.
Mr Grech noted the mistrust and suspicion with which the ordinary citizen perceives the Single Market, a situation which has been reinforced by the recent financial crisis. In fact Grech states that a new definition has to be given to the Single Market and warns that unless proper ownership of the Single Market by citizens and the member states is put into place then the European Single Market process runs the risk of experiencing disintegration as opposed to more integration.