Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2010-12-14-Speech-2-681"
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"en.20101214.41.2-681"2
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"Mr President, Commissioner Tajani, ladies and gentlemen, I would like to start by offering my sincere thanks to the shadow rapporteurs from the Committee on the Internal Market and Consumer Protection, those who helped produce this report and everyone who contributed to this splendid result. Without the constructive and very open collaboration with both the Commission and with the Belgian Presidency of the Council, it would not be possible to conclude this package tomorrow.
As I am sure you can imagine, I am very satisfied with this result. The repeal of a total of eight outdated and obsolete directives will enable us to take another step in the direction of less bureaucracy in Europe. What is interesting in said directives is that they largely became obsolete because they have already been replaced by international standards that represent the latest state of the art. Member State rules and regulations are often rendered obsolete by harmonised European rules and regulations, after all. In this case, European rules and regulations have become superfluous thanks to international stipulations.
If we want to make progress towards our target of having 25% less bureaucracy in Europe by 2012, we need to nail our colours to the mast now. To put it in the words of the Chair of the High Level Group of Independent Stakeholders on Administrative Burdens, Edmund Stoiber, we in Europe must not only purse our lips, we need to whistle loudly. In other words, our words must be followed up by tangible action. When it comes to that action, the devil is often in the detail, however. This directive repealing eight directives relating to metrology has shown this clearly once again. Measuring instruments for cold water meters for non-clean water, alcohol meters, certain weights, tyre pressure gauges and equipment to measure the standard mass of grain or the size of ship tanks have been replaced, in practice, by more modern digital equipment. The outdated equipment is used increasingly rarely and the rules governing such equipment can thus be abolished. There are also no consequences for the functioning of the internal market or for the high standard of consumer protection, which remains of great importance to us.
Yet the Council has been blocking this package for some time. We have managed, however, to reach a reasonable compromise between the Council and Parliament in the informal trialogue, and even to do so at first reading – which is always the exception rather than the rule for us. The substance of that agreement is as follows: one directive – namely that concerning the calibration of ship tanks – is to be repealed immediately, which is to say, with effect from 1 July 2011, while the remaining seven directives will be repealed once the recast version of the Framework Measuring Instruments Directive (MID), which the Commission is currently working on, has been adopted. The Commission will produce a new proposal for the MID by the end of April 2011. The idea is that the Commission, when reviewing the MID, will also examine whether and, if so, what elements from the old directives should be retained and should therefore be incorporated into the MID to that end. If the Member States provide evidence that certain elements within the seven directives are still necessary, for example, on consumer protection grounds, such as provisions from the directive relating to tyre pressure gauges for motor vehicles, these sections will be incorporated into the Framework Measuring Instruments Directive. Once the recast version of the MID has been adopted, the remaining directives will be repealed.
This is a signal that Europe is serious about cutting red tape and that we are eager to create the conditions for sustainable economic growth. I am proud of the fact that the European Parliament is doing its bit, in this way, to help cut red tape and to produce better, more streamlined and simpler lawmaking.
Allow me just to conclude with a brief word about the correlation tables. These are the tables that the Member States are supposed to draw up in order to document how they have implemented the directive. In the end, we agreed on a less strict wording in this regard. We fought for stricter wordings in future, however, and we achieved our goal in this regard. The Conference of Presidents will champion this cause accordingly to the Council and the Commission. This represents a success that we have the rapporteurs and the shadow rapporteurs to thank for."@en1
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