Prior to this, ministers had already met in Amsterdam at the end of January, in an informal format. First, under the agenda item “competitiveness check-up” – which has become a permanent exercise since last year – ministers had an exchange of views on the SMEs potential to scaling up and creating new jobs in the EU. Besides bringing up examples from national practices, delegations mentioned several key areas where EU policies could make a difference, such as facilitating access to finance, stimulating cross-border activities and creating a future-proof regulatory environment.
The Council also discussed the Council Conclusions on the Single Market Strategy for services and goods. The conclusions focus on three substantive priorities of the Strategy, namely 1) SMEs, start-ups, scale-ups and innovative businesses; 2) services and 3) implementation, compliance and enforcement. The debate concentrated on the concept of the Services Passport which would consist of a harmonised notification form and an electronic document repository to make it easier for businesses to provide services in other Member States. Following a long debate on the Services Passport, the Council adopted the Conclusion with an amendment under which the Services Passport could also address regulatory barriers where appropriate.
As a follow-up to the extraordinary Council meeting on 9 November 2015 addressing the challenges faced by the European steel industry, the Council took stoke of the measures taken since then and of the outcome of the Conference on Energy-Intensive Industries on February 2016. Delegations acknowledged the Commission’s efforts, at the same time urged that further measures should be taken without delay, such as modernising trade defence instruments, speeding up anti-dumping procedures, reducing regulatory and ETS-related cost. The Presidency published its account of this agenda item on the same day, in the form of Presidency Conclusions.
During the working lunch, ministers had an informal exchange of views on the implementation of country-specific recommendations aiming to tackle barriers to growth and investment in the services sector. In the course of the debate, ministers shared their national experience with the implementation of country-specific recommendations and heard about challenges and obstacles which have been encountered, but also about good practices and successful cases of reforms carried out by implementing the recommendations.
At the end, ministers had an exchange of view on the circular economy action plan, published by the Commission on 2 December 2015. The Environment Council will also hold a debate on the action plan later this week; the outcome of both debates will feed into the preparations of Council conclusions that are planned to be submitted to the Environmental Council in June. With this in view ministers outlined their priorities and main messages concerning the action plan to the Environmental Council. Besides taking note of the many opportunities arising from the circular economy, members also draw attention to the possible difficulties business, especially SMEs, could face during the changeover phase; therefore, policies should be designed in a way that no extra burden is put on companies.
