Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2010-05-05-Speech-3-580"
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"en.20100505.78.3-580"2
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"Mr President, on behalf of the Committee on the Internal Market and Consumer Protection, I am very pleased to be here this evening to present our aspect of the question, and I particularly want to thank our colleagues on the Committee on Economic and Monetary Affairs, who of course have leadership on competition issues, for working closely with us, because clearly this is an element of competition policy which also has fundamental interests for consumers, and we have been ensuring from our side that some of those consumer elements are very well represented.
First of all, I think that the elements of the Commission’s proposal relating to the sales, service and repair market are very much aligned with the consumer interests which we have raised in our committee – not specifically on issues related to DG Competition, but for example particularly in the areas related to information on service and repair where we worked, in this instance, with the Environment Committee on the provisions concerning technical information linked to environmental standards for motor vehicles. I think that those elements, which have been reinforced in the new proposal, are extremely welcome as regards sustaining competition between independent repairers and market access for spare parts with equivalent quality markings: the opening up of that market is very welcome.
I think the one reservation which we would draw to your attention, which is contained in the resolution on which we will vote tomorrow, concerns the issues about the availability of information. We are not convinced – you may wish to convince us, but we are not convinced – that the guidelines you published are necessarily sufficiently strong or enforceable to ensure that this technical information is available, particularly because it will be possible for car manufacturers to make that information available in an electronic format, which, without appropriate software and searching capability, may not be so valuable to the service repairer as we would expect it to be.
Having said that, I now want to turn to the issue of sales, which we just heard eloquently addressed by the Vice-Chair of the Economic and Monetary Affairs Committee. I think on sales we are much less convinced that the Commission has really taken on board the concerns of consumers. The Economic and Monetary Affairs Committee held a very important hearing where we heard from both dealers and consumer representatives about their very real concerns that the safeguards which have been put in place to ensure competition in the sales market, which were put there clearly in 2002 – many of them, I have to say, in response to concerns raised by this Parliament – have simply been swept away by what seems to us to be rather excessive zeal on your part to simplify issues and make life rather easier for you, as an administration, to deal with it.
There may be problems with that, but I would suggest to you – and I would like you to look at the evidence which was placed before us in our hearing – that dealers and consumers do have serious concerns about bringing automotive distribution straight away into the general block exemption. There were clear safeguards built in back in 2002 – not that long ago in the cycle of car distribution – to redress the balance of power between independent dealers and manufacturers. I think the dealers would say that this has actually worked rather well over that time. Indeed, if you look at what has happened in the marketplace, they would feel that that was the case.
Perhaps I might also remind you, Commissioner, because I think you were not around at the time, that there was a lot of lobbying by the car manufacturers that these provisions were excessive, but the dealers were in favour of them. What do we have now? We have the dealers saying to us: these provisions are too weak and the manufacturers saying: we like them very much.
I think you need to look at this. I am not saying that we should stop this process – I think it is the right thing to do now, given that we are now only a few days away from implementing these – but what we are saying to you in the resolution tomorrow is: please look at the up-to-date data, look at the information. I would also say that, within the Commission, Commissioner Barnier is about to produce a report about competition in the retail supply chain. The automotive sector should be part of that, and you need to look at that because we need some consistent policy from the Commission.
Secondly, the papers which I have seen from your services say: do you think this is a preparation for the new generation of green cars, electric vehicles, and low-emission vehicles? There is nothing in your analysis whatsoever that has picked up any of that.
We now have Mr Tajani’s paper. Can I ask you, within the next year, to look at Mr Tajani’s paper, look at Mr Barnier’s paper and assure us that this is the right thing to do? I think that if you do that you will restore some credibility here, because I think that we remain unconvinced on that side about what you are planning to do."@en1
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