Photo by Masood Aslami on Unsplash
A campaign group claims that plans outlined recently by the European Commission will boost corporate power.
Campaigners allege that the Commission’s Single Market Strategy communication will limit the democratic space that national and local authorities need to protect people and the environment.
The Commission’s plans were launched in the context of what Brussels-based group, Corporate Europe Observatory (CEO), claims has been an unprecedented deregulation wave, under the banner of pursuing competitiveness.
CEO says, “Since the start of the second VDL Commission this has led to a radical rollback of the EU’s corporate supply chain laws (via an Omnibus package), with laws on chemicals, digital rights, agriculture, and many other issues lined up for similar treatment.”
It goes on, “The Commission’s Single Market Strategy is full of fingerprints from corporate lobbying campaigns.”
The CEO statement states, “The communication includes a particularly worrying proposal for a so-called 28th Regime, which would enable a range of companies to opt out of national labour law and instead operate under lower EU-wide standards.”
“The Commission also announces a cross cutting Single Market omnibus and a wide range of other measures that are described as simplification but have a clear deregulation agenda. The goal is to remove differences in national level regulations that create regulatory barriers to trade in the Single Market; many of these differences, however, are entirely legitimate rules that exist to address societal problems.”
Olivier Hoedeman, Corporate Europe Observatory coordinator, says, “The new Single Market Strategy will further limit the democratic space that governments need to protect people and the environment, giving industry far-reaching powers to veto and roll back national and municipal regulations. This is dangerous in times of growing social inequality, accelerating ecological crisis and deepening concerns about democracy.”
Further comment comes from Kenneth Haar, Corporate Europe Observatory researcher and campaigner, who stated, “In the light of the radical deregulation mood in the Commission headquarters, strong guarantees to protect the public interest are needed to prevent Single Market single-mindedness from destroying crucial environmental measures and protect social rights.”
However, the commission has won strong support from elsewhere for the EU Startup and Scale-up Strategy.
Even so, SMEunited President Petri Salminen warned that Europe “can no longer afford to see its most promising innovative companies scale up in the USA or Asia”.
His organisation represents SMEs at the pan-EU level.
He added, “We welcome this new strategy, which rightly highlights the existing shortcomings. But its success will ultimately depend on real progress in strengthening the Single Market, improving regulation, and advancing the Capital Markets Union”.
SMEunited says it “strongly supports the European Commission’s ambition to reinforce the Single Market, unlock investment, and improve the overall environment for SMEs to launch and grow.”
It adds, “We stand ready to collaborate on concrete policy measures that will turn this strategy into a tangible success.”
A statement added, “The strategy acknowledges a key issue: Europe excels at creating startups but struggles to help them scale. A major factor is the lack of access to growth funding, largely due to underdeveloped capital markets. Yet the most critical barrier remains the fragmentation of the Single Market, which significantly raises the cost and complexity of scaling across borders.”
It concludes, “These hurdles not only drive companies to expand elsewhere but also deter long-term investors.”
