Information about the functioning of the internal market is due to improve for both customers and politicians. Following a debate at the European Parliament today, the plenary voted by a large majority in favour of three own-initiative reports about the internal market and consumer protection.

The most interesting report from a consumer's perspective is the one about the EU online network 'Solvit'. Parliament's rapporteur for this report, ALDE member Cristian BUSOI (PNL, Romania), explained: "Solvit is an efficient tool for European citizens and European enterprises to find solutions to problems caused by poor implementation and application of EU internal market legislation."

"Because Solvit risks being the victim of its own success with an increasing number of cases each year, members states need to make efforts to employ more people in Solvit centres and to increase the knowledge of the employees, mainly in juridical issues. Nevertheless, Solvit needs to be better promoted to citizens and enterprises through different informational campaigns. The exchange of best practice between the different national Solvit centres should also be encouraged. In this regard, I thank Commissioner Barnier for his commitment in the debate today to establish an easily accessible website www.solvit.eu", BUSOI added.

The other two reports deal broadly with the improvement of existing scoreboards that show on the one hand the (lack of) transposition of EU law into national law and on the other hand the (lack of) functioning of markets in consumer-oriented terms, such as price and safety differences.

Jürgen CREUTZMANN (FDP, Germany), ALDE member at the Internal Market and Consumer Protection Committee, concluded: "The fact that several member states still don't meet the target to transpose at least 99 percent of the internal market legislation is not acceptable for the Liberals. These deficits affect to consumers and even more to small and medium-sized enterprises, which rely on the harmonisation within the common market, but still too often face time-wasting bureaucratic hurdles, when their activities go cross-border."

More information and success stories from Solvit can be reviewed online at http://ec.europa.eu/solvit/site/success/index_en.htm

The last internal market scoreboard by the Commission is available at
http://ec.europa.eu/internal_market/score/index_en.htm
 

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For more information, please contact:

Neil Corlett: +33-3-88 17 41 67 or +32-478-78 22 84

e-mail: neil.corlett@europarl.europa.eu

Axel Heyer: +33-3-88 17 23 27 or +32-485-10 33 39

Web: http://www.alde.eu