Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2008-07-09-Speech-3-445"
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"en.20080709.37.3-445"2
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"Mr President, Mr Ryan, I am very grateful to you for this question because it addresses a problem with which the Commission has been deeply concerned for years: how to reduce unnecessary red tape for small and medium enterprises in Europe. I am glad to be able to tell you that we have indeed made huge progress in this area and I am firmly convinced that we are about to see a real breakthrough.
Basically we have identified the costs of red tape for European enterprises as costs arising from reporting, documentation and information obligations. We are currently engaged in actually measuring those costs, in the largest project of its kind in the whole of history. That means we really are establishing what costs these rules actually create for enterprises so that we can then see where the costs come from and whether they can be reduced.
You can expect a large number of Commission proposals from about September this year, based on the results of the measurements and the screening of all the existing rules. We expect that will enable us to put forward so many proposals by the end of 2009 that the cost of red tape for European enterprises will fall by 25% in the year 2012. We are assuming that will trigger a 1.4% to 1.5% growth in the entire European GNP. So you can see we really are talking significant orders of magnitude.
You then addressed a particular problem that is, however, quite distinct from the matter of normal bureaucratic costs. It is the burden placed on small enterprises in particular to comply with the tax requirements – and you know that the European Union’s powers in this regard are extremely limited. We know from all our inquiries that the enterprises themselves feel that the requirements of the financial authorities represent by far the most serious and heaviest burden, so this is an area where it really is up to the Member States to simplify matters.
After all, we only have competences in the area of turnover taxes and even there they are very limited. The Commission has, however, made one very important proposal that would be a great help to small and medium enterprises: it is substantially to raise the threshold above which they need to declare turnover tax in advance, i.e. register for VAT. The current threshold is EUR 20 000, we want to raise it to EUR 100 000, which would free nearly all very small enterprises and in particular newly established enterprises from this heavy burden.
Sadly I must tell you that so far the Member States have not been prepared to accept that proposal. I hope that the Small Business Act that the Commission presented a few days ago and in which we addressed the question once again will put more pressure on those Member States that are creating difficulties here and I am extremely grateful to the European Parliament for its numerous signs of support in this regard."@en1
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