Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2009-11-11-Speech-3-293"
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"en.20091111.23.3-293"2
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"Mr President, I am happy to have the opportunity today to address you in plenary session on the proposal for a regulation on origin marking. This is a proposal which honourable Members may recall the Parliament has been a strong supporter of since its adoption by the College as long ago as December 2005. I particularly recall your resolution of July 2006 and the written declaration of September 2007. I was privileged to discuss this issue last month in Strasbourg with a group of MEPs who stressed to me the need to move rapidly to adopt this regulation.
I am pleased to say that the Member States have received our options paper with interest. Although not all doubts have been resolved and several Member States have maintained their opposition in principle to this proposal, they are ready to study the issue further and the work will continue over the next few weeks at both experts meetings level and in the Article 133 Committee. I sincerely hope this will clear the way for a compromise solution.
As honourable Members know, the new Article 207 of the Treaty of Lisbon gives Parliament new and increased authority on legislative measures in the field of trade policy – and the ‘made in’ regulation could be one of the first to appear on honourable Members’ desks.
I am therefore very interested in keeping you closely involved in the further discussions on this important subject, and look forward to our brief debate now.
I think honourable Members would agree that it is of fundamental importance that trade policy not only strengthens the opportunities that open markets can offer but also addresses the concerns globalisation generates not just for consumers, but also, and perhaps particularly, for small enterprises.
Origin marking should therefore be considered in that spirit. In the 2007 declaration, you emphasised the right of European consumers to have clear and immediate information about their purchases. That is precisely what this regulation is about. It aims to allow EU consumers to be fully aware of the country of origin of the products that they purchase.
The Commission has proposed a compulsory indication of the country of origin of certain products imported into the European Union from third countries. Not all products are covered – we focused on those of real interest, following a broad consultation with consumers and with industry.
Origin marking, I might add, is fully in line with the current WTO rules and principles and something that exists almost everywhere in the world. Imports into the United States, into Canada, China and Japan are subject to country of origin marking. As a matter of fact, most products that you can currently purchase in shops in the European Union already bear the country of origin mark, as most legal systems currently require it. This means, of course, that for the vast majority of businesses, an obligation to mark products exported to the European Union will entail no additional cost.
Since 2006, discussions have been held in Council in order to reach an agreement on the Commission proposal. A number of Member States remain to be convinced. They are worried that the administrative burden and the costs of an origin marking scheme may outweigh the benefits.
We have taken due note of those concerns, and we have recently presented concrete options that we believe address those issues. This is not a new formal proposal; it is an attempt to find common ground and reach a compromise. A Commission options paper was discussed with the Member States in the Article 133 Committee on 23 October 2009.
First of all, the Commission asked the Member States to consider the option of narrowing the product coverage – so as to include only end-consumer goods. The original list contained some intermediate products, such as raw skin and certain textiles, that are not of direct interest to the consumer. The Commission suggests now to include only those goods that consumers can find in retail stores.
Secondly, the Commission suggested that the scheme be launched on a pilot project basis. Any continuation would be subject to an evaluation of the impact the proposed scheme had. This would allow for an assessment of the impact on cost and on price – it may also, of course, give some indication of how we could modify the product coverage of the regulation."@en1
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