BETA

Activities of Vicky FORD related to 2014/2150(INI)

Shadow opinions (1)

2016/11/22
Committee: IMCO
Dossiers: 2014/2150(INI)
Documents: PDF(120 KB) DOC(190 KB)

Amendments (16)

Draft opinion
Paragraph -1 (new)

-1. Welcomes the REFIT Communication and the continued commitment shown by the Commission towards the better law- making agenda; underlines that the work foreseen in the REFIT Communication should be seen as an ongoing process, ensuring that the legislation in force at European level is fit for purpose, achieving the shared objective of the legislators and meeting the expectations of citizens, businesses and other stakeholders;

2014/12/11
Committee: IMCO

Draft opinion
Paragraph 1

1. Considers that, where the need for action at EU level has been clearly identified and respects the principles of subsidiarity and proportionality, it should be carefully assessed wh~~ich~~ether a non-legislative or legislative instrument (regulation or directive) is best suited for reaching the intended political goal; considers that a set of indicators to identify the full compliance costs as well as administrative costs of any new legislative act should be applied in order to better assess its impact;

2014/12/11
Committee: IMCO

Draft opinion
Paragraph 1 a (new)

1a. Calls on the Commission and Member States to be more rigorous in assessing the impact of future and existing regulation on SMEs and competitiveness in general; believes that the assessment of an impact on competitiveness should form a significant part of the impact assessment process; considers that the draft revised guidelines should contain direction on how impacts on competitiveness should be assessed and weighed in the final analysis; supports a standing presumption that proposals with a negative impact on competitiveness should be rejected, unless evidence supporting significant unquantifiable benefits is presented;

2014/12/11
Committee: IMCO

Draft opinion
Paragraph 1 b (new)

1b. Expresses disappointment that the measures identified for review in the scoreboard accompanying the Communication are far from new, but rather represent a catalogue of measures which the Commission were obliged to follow due to expiring review clauses in previously adopted legislation; expects a more ambitious approach from the new Commission to the objectives contained in the REFIT Communication, in particular to tackle the tough questions such as those highlighted in the TOP TEN Consultation with SMEs;

2014/12/11
Committee: IMCO

Draft opinion
Paragraph 1 c (new)

1c. Considers that the concept of the scoreboards should be revised and should instead comprise two documents, one outlining a work plan, and a second, new document which details the progress made by the Commission expressed in a quantitative fashion; calls for this document to form the basis of an annual statement of new costs to business, an easily understood statement or ledger of 'debits and credits' in terms of the administrative and regulatory impact from proposals adopted in the previous legislative year which would be much more useful, and would show that the Commission understands that the cumulative cost of regulation is often the problem;

2014/12/11
Committee: IMCO

Draft opinion
Paragraph 1 d (new)

1d. Insists that the next Commission should establish a European objective of a 30% reduction in the costs to SMEs generated by administrative and compliance costs and regulatory burdens by 2020;

2014/12/11
Committee: IMCO

Draft opinion
Paragraph 2

2. Reiterates that SMEs need careful consideration in EU legislation; calls on the Commission, with a view to providing evidence on the added value of EU action and its costs and benefits, to include a mandatory SME test in the revised impact assessment guidelines; notes that in 2011 the Commission committed to lighter regulatory regimes for SMEs; strongly encourages the Commission to build on the progress it has made in this area by continuing to cut the cost of legislation for micro-enterprises and extending these efforts to cover all SMEs as a starting position, to be rebutted by evidence where appropriate;

2014/12/11
Committee: IMCO

Draft opinion
Paragraph 2 a (new)

2a. Notes that the European Parliament's position in the Resolution of 17 April 2014 on the 'top ten' consultation process and lightening the burden of EU regulation on SMEs was to reduce burdens of employment legislation and to fundamentally overhaul the Working Time Directive as it is inflexible for micro-enterprises and SMEs; also notes that the European Parliament adopted the position in the same resolution to recommend that low-risk companies should not be required to keep written health and safety assessments, in order to reduce the burdens of health and safety legislation;

2014/12/11
Committee: IMCO

Draft opinion
Paragraph 4

4. ~~Calls on the Commission~~Believes that better regulation principles should apply to decisions on secondary legislation as well as primary legislation; calls on the Commission and its agencies where appropriate to accompany delegated and implementing acts with a mandatory impact assessment, including consultation with interested parties and stakeholders, whenever their impact can be expected to be considerable; calls, to that effect, for an amendment of the guidelines for implementing acts in line with the general guidelines for delegated acts; emphasises that co-legislators should be as specific as possible in Tier 1 legislation about what delegated and implementing acts should accomplish; notes that in the European Parliament Resolution of 4 February 2014 on EU Regulatory Fitness and Subsidiarity and Proportionality the Commission was urged to step up its review of the application of the principle of proportionality, especially with regard to the use of Article 290 and 291 TFEU on delegated and implementing acts; also notes that in the same resolution the Parliament called on the Commission to strengthen the role and independence of the Impact Assessment Board (IAB), and in particular only to finalise and present legislative proposals where they have been approved with a favourable opinion by that Board;

2014/12/11
Committee: IMCO

Draft opinion
Paragraph 6

6. Calls for ~~businesses and~~ stakeholders to be more closely involved with subsidiarity checks, and administrative burden assessment~~, and~~; believes that the monitoring of the implementation of EU legislation at national level could be enhanced by the use of peer review by Member States; welcomes the Commission’s intention to establish a new High Level Group on better regulation under the responsibility of the responsible Vice-President;

2014/12/11
Committee: IMCO

Draft opinion
Paragraph 6 a (new)

6a. Recalls its previous requests for a more detailed examination of the problems national parliaments encounter in order to monitor subsidiarity; believes that it would also be desirable to explore moves to strengthen this mechanism which, perhaps in the context of future Treaty revision, could give more rights to national parliaments, for example by introducing a 'red card' system; suggests that in such a review consideration could be given to the appropriate number of national parliament responses required to trigger such a procedure, whether it should be limited to subsidiarity grounds, and what its effect should be, with particular reference to recent experiences of the 'yellow card' procedure;

2014/12/11
Committee: IMCO

Draft opinion
Paragraph 7

7. Calls on the Commission to ensure that consultations with stakeholders are transparent and timely and their output is analysed both quantitatively and qualitatively to ensure that minority views are also duly taken into account; considers ~~that feedback could already be given on draft~~it critical that stakeholders have the opportunity, at the earliest stages of the legislative process to comment on unnecessarily burdensome aspects of Commission proposals via a published provisional impact assessments to the Impact Assessment Board, at the stage preceding the final legislative proposal and assessment;

2014/12/11
Committee: IMCO

Draft opinion
Paragraph 7 a (new)

7a. Urges the Commission to increase its consultation, both public and private, with all stakeholders, including consumers, when preparing implementing and delegated acts with a view to considering how better to increase awareness of proposals at a provisional stage; believes firmly that such efforts to increase their input before finalising recommendations will lead to better legislation; welcomes in this regard possible initiatives to compare processes for consulting on provisional rules or standards with those used in other jurisdictions in order to develop best practice;

2014/12/11
Committee: IMCO

Draft opinion
Paragraph 8

8. Considers that stakeholders and Member States should be more closely involved in identifying specific implementation difficulties at national level and should provide feedback to the Commission; calls for the use of indicators for measuring full compliance costs as well as the ~~costs of non-regulation~~savings that may be achieved by having a single market approach (along the lines of the ‘Cost of non- Europe’);

2014/12/11
Committee: IMCO

Draft opinion
Paragraph 9

9. Welcomes the prospective drafting of internal guidelines for improving the quality of consultations and their evaluation; believes that as regards the complexity of ~~a proposed legislative act~~the policy choices in any one area, the questions in consultations need to be both more specific and worded so as to be clearly understandable; where legislation is proposed in a complex field, considers that a second stage of consultation should be envisaged whereby a draft legislative act is published, accompanied by a provisional Impact Assessment, for comment by all relevant stakeholders; considers that this second stage would introduce further rigor into the Commission's analysis and strengthen the case for any proposal adopted following this process;

2014/12/11
Committee: IMCO

Draft opinion
Paragraph 10

10. Calls on the Commission to further develop the Your Europe Portal in cooperation with the Member States, in order to give SMEs easy access to practical information on upcoming consultation, relevant EU rules and their application in Member States in a multilingual format;

2014/12/11
Committee: IMCO