International

This afternoon we held an official round table meeting in the European Parliament on the retail trade. It was striking to note how the European Commission continues to expect all of the blessings of an increase in scale via the internal market and is principally concerned with massive chains of shops. If we look at the purchasing behaviour of consumers, however, they are showing more interest in discount stores and specialist shops, with the latter making the biggest gains. So the department store formula, the style of retailers such as the Netherlands’ own V&D, is no longer working. Such shops fall between the two categories. For the discount stores the internal market can be extremely important, but specialist shops must not be disadvantaged by the European Union’s competition laws. They must be given the space that they need.

From two examples it can be seen that the Commission continues to give little consideration to the needs of small shops. Firstly, cross-border roving gangs of shoplifters are still not a priority for most police forces in Europe, despite the fact that they inflict enormous losses on retailers, which can signal the death-knell for small, independent shops. During the meeting a representative of the Dutch police explained that together with the Netherlands main retail trade association they had started an initiative to assemble all the important data on the backgrounds and methods of the gangs. That’s a step forward, because these data enable the gangs to be rounded up. Even in the Netherlands, however, the police are given far too few resources for combatting this kind of crime, yet our country is in the forefront of this within the EU. It’s time that the matter was put on the agenda of the European Parliament. Today I promised that this would be done, and the SP always keeps such promises.

Next year the European Commission will issue a statement about freedom of establishment for retail firms. That sounds okay, but we need to be on our guard, because at the moment things are changing so much in the retail trade that local authorities must be allowed to help fill empty spaces in their shopping streets. They must also, where there is surplus capacity for shops, be given the chance to use planning policy to provide a concentration of outlets in lively shopping streets and shopping centres. The arrival of a hypermarket can be a killer blow. Here too I’ve promised to keep my finger on the pulse. The SP is in favour of a fair and varied spread of shops. That’s good for security on the street, good for contact between people and last but not least good for employment. In this respect, European competition laws must not throw a spanner in the works. Small shops can continue to count on us.