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EU industry ministers are meeting to discuss Europe’s competitiveness as well as the future of the EU single market, building on the two in-depth reports presented by Letta and Draghi in April and September respectively.
However, in the lead-up to the meeting, an exceptionally high number of member states have co-signed an unofficial position paper, known as ‘non-paper’, calling for a larger policy focus on the further integration of the European single market.
The initiative comes as a response to perceived lack of attention to the topic in the two reports, an EU diplomat told Euractiv, despite Letta’s work officially focused on the “future of the single market.”
“Not only in the Letta report but also in Draghi’s, the dimension of the internal market and its functioning has been a bit sidelined,” they said.
In Letta’s report, “there were just two pages out of 150 that dealt with services and the single market as such,” the diplomat added. Draghi largely skipped the topic, arguing that it had already been discussed in Letta’s report, they added.
The non-paper, which will be discussed publicly at the end of the ministers’ meeting and was coordinated by Luxembourg and the Czech Republic, calls for “concrete short-term and medium-term actions to facilitate cross-border trade” – such as in services – “where there is still significant fragmentation and divergence between national rules.”
The document was signed by a majority of smaller member states, but also Germany and Poland. Notably, however, France, Italy and Spain – whose nationals are set to hold the new Commission posts for industrial, cohesion and competition policies respectively – are missing.
“The intention was to take on board as many member states as possible,” the diplomat said, “including the ones like Germany and the likes that usually do not subscribe to these types of documents.” ...
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