Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2015-05-18-Speech-1-273-000"
| Predicate | Value (sorted: default) |
|---|---|
| rdf:type | |
| dcterms:Date | |
| dcterms:Is Part Of | |
| dcterms:Language | |
| lpv:document identification number |
"en.20150518.19.1-273-000"2
|
| lpv:hasSubsequent | |
| lpv:speaker | |
| lpv:spoken text |
"Mr President, I would like you all to imagine for a moment that you have just set up a small digital business. Perhaps you sell e—books or knitting patterns online. You have heard about the digital single market, and you are excited to think that you can sell to customers not only in your own country, but across the whole EU. You know that you need to register for VAT but when you look into it, you find that you need to keep accounts for up to 10 years and calculate up to 88 different VAT rates set by the countries you sell to. Someone tells you that you can automate the process, but you find the system either does not work, or that you have to sell through an online marketplace that charges you a large fee and may interrupt your sales process to sell other products to your customers.
So what do you do? Do you feel inspired by this new digital single market, or do you give up and shut up shop? Well, EU VAT Action and Enterprise Nation, who represent digital entrepreneurs, tell me that thousands of their members are closing down. So while the Commission champions the digital single market, EU rules since January 2015 are strangling digital businesses to death with red tape.
Now we all know that these rules are well-meaning and introduced to tackle abuses by multinational companies, so why do we not introduce a threshold – or even an exemption – a limit below which digital entrepreneurs could continue as before, and then when their businesses grow larger, bring them into this new system? Let us not forget that every large business started as a small business. Most great entrepreneurs started with nothing. So if the EU is to be a place for aspiration and opportunity and we are to create this digital single market, then we need to help them. Let us listen to the digital entrepreneurs asking for our help. Let us introduce a threshold or an exemption to save their micro-businesses. Let us cut the red tape to make the digital single market a reality for them."@en1
|
| lpv:spokenAs | |
| lpv:unclassifiedMetadata | |
| lpv:videoURI |
Named graphs describing this resource:
The resource appears as object in 2 triples