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GRTU calls for Government’s action on important proposal on Standardisation for SMEs
13 April 2012
The Internal Market Committee of the European Parliament (IMCO) has voted recently on its report, which contains an article that can have very negative consequences for the participation of SMEs in the European standardisation process. As the file is currently being discussed in the Council called on the Maltese Government's intervention.
Annex III of the proposal for a regulation of the European Parliament and of the Council on European Standardisation COM(2011)0315 – C7 0150/2011 – 2011/0150(COD)) sets the requirements that the European stakeholder organisations should meet in order to be eligible for the financing by the Union.
The draft regulation, in its original version as proposed by the European Commission, stipulated that a European SME stakeholder organization should be mandated by non-profit organisations representing the relevant stakeholder category "in at least two thirds of the Member States".
Amendment 110 of the IMCO report modifies the above requirement only for the organisation representing SMEs, making this much more demanding than before: the European organisation must be "mandated by non-profit organisations representing the majority of SMEs in all Member States".
If this text is adopted this will have extremely negative consequences. The three most relevant ones being:
a) no European SME organisation would be able to fulfil the criteria
b) no financing for the representation of SMEs in standardisation
c) no representation of SME-specific interests in standardisation at EU-level
GRTU therefore asked the Maltese Government to reject the amendment 110 of IMCO, in order to go back to the initial Commission proposal.
