Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2009-02-03-Speech-2-353"
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"en.20090203.22.2-353"2
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"− One month ago, Parliament adopted a resolution on the proposal for a directive on the procurement of defence and security equipment. This means that the proposal has successfully completed first reading and will shortly be adopted by the Council.
The new directive is a major step forward towards the establishment of a common European defence market. It will introduce fair and transparent procurement rules applicable throughout the Union. This will enhance the openness of defence markets between Member States to the benefit of all. European industries will get a much larger home market and become more competitive; our armed forces will get better value for money, which will help to improve Europe’s defence capabilities; and last but not least, taxpayers will benefit from more efficiency in public spending.
One of the controversial issues during the debate on the directive were ‘offsets’ – that is, economic compensation for defence purchases from foreign suppliers. Some Member States proposed to include in the directive a compensation system which will allow them to secure such industrial returns on defence investments.
Offsets aim at fostering the industry of the Member State which purchases defence equipment abroad. As such, they can lead to distortion of the internal market and imply discrimination against companies from other Member States on the basis of the nationality of the supplier. The EC Treaty prohibits discrimination on the grounds of nationality, and a directive, as secondary law, has to abide by the Treaty.
The Legal Service of the Council confirmed in its opinion of 28 October 2008 that, and I quote, ‘restrictive procurement measures designed to promote domestic industry do not comply with the general principles of the EC Treaty’. Consequently, offsets on defence procurement can only be permitted if they are necessary for the protection of essential security interests or justified on the basis of an overriding requirement of general interest. Economic interests, by contrast, are not sufficient. The vast majority of Member States and Parliament agreed with this assessment.
So there was not only a legal obligation, but also a political consensus not to accept in the directive compensations directed at fostering national industries. Accordingly, neither the Commission in its proposal, nor the colegislators, namely the Council and the European Parliament, included specific rules on offsets in the text of the Defence Directive.
The Defence Directive does, however, offer alternatives to offsets. Member States which are principally purchasers of defence equipment usually seek to justify their wish to have offsets either with security of supply needs or with the necessity to open up defence markets for their SMEs. The Defence Procurement Directive will satisfy these concerns. On the one hand, it allows the contracting authorities to ask tenderers for specific commitments to satisfy their security of supply requirements. On the other hand, it contains provisions on subcontracting which make it possible to require tenderers to open up their supply chains to EU-wide competition and facilitate access for SMEs, as this will contribute to reconciling the legitimate security and economic interests of Member States that are purchasers and avoid the need to have recourse to compensations or offsets."@en1
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