Commissioners pledge to ‘complete internal market’

The European Commission has pledged that removing the remaining obstacles to completing the single market will be its top priority for the coming six months.

Following a ‘back to school’ seminar of commissioners on 19 September, Commission President José Manuel Barroso’s spokesman, Johannes Laitenberger, said that the Commission had reasserted its commitment to its existing priorities which had "put the EU on the right track" and in "better shape" to tackle the "triple challenge" of equipping Europe for globalisation, dealing with enlargement and preparing for a new round of institutional reform.

Laitenberger said that completing the internal market was "at the forefront" of the Commission’s discussion at the seminar in Profondval, 35 kilometres south-east of Brussels. He said that the internal market was the EU’s "most visible policy asset and its most immediate policy challenge". The Commission was determined to implement further the four freedoms, pursue a robust competition policy and resist economic patriotism, he said. Priority areas for action were energy, transport, telecommunication, retail financial services, health and intellectual property, he said.

At the same time, he stressed that the Commission would step up its efforts to show that an effective internal market benefited citizens, announcing that the Commission would prepare a "stocktaking" of social realities to be presented alongside an analysis of gaps in the internal market. "We need to overcome the dichotomy of business-led versus consumer-led, policies," he said.

He also said that the commissioners had discussed the review of the EU’s spending and resources scheduled for 2008-09 explaining that the first priority was to focus on "substance" before addressing the sums of money required.

Speaking as EU justice and home affairs ministers met in Tampere, Finland, Barroso’s spokesman repeated the Commission’s call for member states to agree to use a bridging clause to make decision-making on police and judicial matters easier.

The European Commission has pledged that removing the remaining obstacles to completing the single market will be its top priority for the coming six months.

• Primary Source