International

During last Monday’s annual debate on the State of the Union, the VVD (the larger of the two governing coalition parties) proposed that one of the twenty-eight European Commissioners be given responsibility for the EU’s policies on “SMEs” (the Euro-jargon term for Small and Medium-sized Enterprises). An empty pre-election gesture. This week I joined other MEPs in proposing that in the future as much as possible of the legislation upon which the European Parliament has reached agreement should be subject to one more test to assess its consequences for SMEs. That’s no election rhetoric, but a serious attempt to prevent big business having the only say. This crowns five years on the part of the SP in the European Parliament of consistently considering the interests of small businesses.

So, the European elections are in sight and all of sudden parties are waking up. For five years we heard little from the VVD when it came to the interests of small firms. Oh yes, as long as these coincided with the interests of big firms, the VVD would go along. If, however, what were involved were rules and regulations which were a burden only on small and medium-sized enterprises, but with which major corporations had no problem, the VVD was nowhere to be seen. It was a real battle to ensure that the new rules on public procurement did not adversely affect SMEs and that they would instead offer small firms more opportunity to win government contracts. It was really difficult to get an exception for craft shops to overblown rules on labelling. And it wasn’t easy to win for local authorities the policy space to enable them to offer support to the small, independent shop. In none of these instances did I receive any support from the VVD.

This is the strategy adopted by many parties in dealing with small firms: they talk the talk, but they don’t vote the vote, opting always instead for the interests of big business. That’s why last Monday when I heard the VVD suddenly come out with a proposal to insitute a Commissioner for SMEs, it left me with a nasty taste in my mouth. For once I must agree with the VVD’s own Prime Minister Mark Rutte, when he answered that this would for the most part lead to less attention being paid to the issue, because other Commissioners would draw the conclusion that they need not pay any specific attention to SMEs’ interests.

Much more important is that we keep a close eye on the legislative process. In the European Parliament it is not unusual for legislative proposals to attract hundreds of proposed amendments. After the votes you only know the end product when all of the substance of the successful amendments is incorporated. I have in the past proposed that, before negotiations with the Council of Ministers on the final text begin, room should be made for a quick investigation of the measure’s possible implications for SMEs. In the case of the directive on public procurement we did just that, and this led to further improvements for small businesses, including lower qualifying thresholds and the division of large tenders into smaller parcels. This was supported by the European Parliament as a whole, but this was only a resolution, so many of which are passed that they are often quickly forgotten.

That’s why I’ve written a proposal for amendment of the EP’s rules of order adding a paragraph on the introduction of an “SME test” to be conducted after the votes in Committee. Every European Parliamentary Committee must decide unequivocally whether this is a case of legislation which has no implications for SMEs, but in other cases the Committee will be obliged to explain why a measure does not need to be subject to the “SME test” . I hope that we can get a result here even before the elections, but otherwise I’ll make sure that my proposal is one of the first agenda points for the new European Parliament that starts work in July. This will really help, which is worth a lot more than the election rhetoric of the VVD.