Monti stresses need for full single market
Report says more deeply integrated market is the best source of economic growth available to the EU.
The EU’s single market must be updated to boost jobs and growth and its scope must be widened, member states and MEPs have been told.
Last October, José Manuel Barroso, the European Commission’s president, asked Mario Monti, a former European commissioner, to prepare a report on the future of the single market.
Today the Italian presented his report to Herman Van Rompuy, president of the European Council, and to the European Parliament’s internal market committee.
Monti urged the EU to seize “a window of opportunity” to pass reforms needed to further closer economic integration, the key aim of the single-market project that was launched in 1992.
He said a re-launch was needed to “safeguard” the single market from the recent surge in economic nationalism between EU nations during the economic crisis.
In his report, Monti called on the Commission and member states to remove the “remaining bottlenecks and plug the gaps and missing links that hamper innovation and dampen growth potential in the single market”.
He said the EU’s single market had to be updated to include all aspects of goods and services and government areas of regulation including competition, the digital agenda, climate change, taxation and regional policies.
“Achieving a deep and efficient single market is a key factor for determining the EU’s overall macroeconomic performance. It is particularly crucial for the solidity of the euro and for monetary union to deliver the promised economic benefits,” Monti’s report said.
Barroso described re-launching the single market as “a key strategic objective of the new Commission”.
Among Monti’s recommendations are supporting “green growth” industries, full exploitation of the services market, easier movement of workers across borders and more specific proposals, such as fast-tracking the creation of a single European patent.
Monti urged the EU to adopt stronger regulatory powers in the telecommunications sector to push the creation of an integrated market for electronic communications.
Monti, who was European commissioner for internal market policy in 1995-99 and commissioner for competition in 1999-2004, said much depended on the political will of member states to improve the single market.
Monti concluded that the economic crisis showed that a stronger single market was crucial to restoring growth in the EU. “Given the very limited margins available for budget stimuli, making the single market more efficient is Europe’s best endogenous source of growth and job creation.”
Barroso hopes to use the report to draft new proposals on a “balanced, broad and fair vision of the new single market” by July, the Commission said.
Malcolm Harbour, the chairman of the Parliament’s internal market committee, said: “Governments’ attentions have understandably been on bail-outs and financial markets but they must also look at the single market as a catalyst for economic growth. In too many national capitals there has been a sense of inertia about the development of the single market. We need national governments to drive it forward again and this report will help jump-start the process.”
But Harbour said that his Conservatives and Reformists group did not accept Monti’s “strong endorsement of tax co-ordination and co-operation, in the context of addressing ‘social concerns’ within the single market”. That, he warned, would lead to tax harmonisation and a reduction in competitiveness.
Romanian Liberal MEP Cristian Busoi, who is co-ordinator for the liberal ALDE group on the Parliament’s internal market committee, said: “Monti is right to call for a re-launch of the single market as the political and economic context has changed substantially since 1992. The digital agenda has taken off in a way that no one could have predicted 20 years ago and globalisation has given rise to concerns about an uneven regulatory playing field.”
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