Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2007-05-09-Speech-3-173"
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".
Madam President, ladies and gentlemen, I should like first of all to thank Mr Toubon for his constructive work on this very difficult legislative proposal and agree with everything that he has just said, particularly when it comes to the lessons to be learnt, that is what we can learn from this dossier. I should like to make one additional point: I hope very much that the Council will see fit to follow Parliament’s example and in future, when it is making amendments to legislative proposals, that it will also carry out an impact assessment. This would certainly help us greatly in our ongoing work of creating better regulation.
This is actually just one part of a major project being implemented by the Commission and all of the other institutions: better regulation. We began with the clear political goal of improving and simplifying the European Union’s existing body of legislation. Mr Toubon is quite right: improving it does not mean abolishing it. Improving it means making it simpler, more transparent and more manageable. Obviously, however, the levels of protection that we have in place should remain intact. In principle, all of the institutions and certainly also consumers and business agree with this. Despite this agreement of principle, however, there are always specific reservations once a proposal is actually drafted and tabled. Then it becomes clear that a political compromise is needed and I am pleased that in this case we have produced a good solution together.
What is this really about? We are dealing here with regulations from the 70s and 80s. At that time mandatory sizes were laid down for a large number of prepacked products. These included such varied goods as toothpaste, detergent, fish fingers, tomato puree, solvents and even dry and wet dog and cat food.
At the time of their adoption around 30 years’ ago, this was the best way of achieving two aims: firstly, to open up the internal market for goods even more, as provided for in the Treaties of Rome, and secondly to ensure the necessary level of consumer protection in the cross-border trade of these goods.
Since then, however, we have significantly developed the internal market and consumer protection within the European Union.
Now it is a question of following suit by simplifying and harmonising the regulations on packaging sizes. Here, less European regulation means more innovation and greater competitiveness.
I am convinced that this proposal will have a positive impact, in particular for consumers. Consumers will gain greater freedom of choice. Furthermore, thanks to the existing directive on unit pricing (pricing per kilogram or litre), they will also continue to be able to compare the prices of different packaging sizes easily in the future.
I am grateful to the rapporteur for his commitment. I also think that we have agreed on transitional rules. As Parliament has requested, the Commission will review the situation in a few years’ time. There is therefore nothing to prevent an agreement at this second reading."@en1
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