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Business hails rethink on £37bn EU goods transport plan

Wednesday 6 December 2006

The FSB today welcomed the announcement from the European Parliament requesting that the European Commission drops the controversial draft Regulation on enhancing supply chain security. The proposal would have cost small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) across all sectors 55 billion Euros (£37 billion) without any clear security benefits.

Following calls for the Regulation’s withdrawal from the Federation of Small Businesses (FSB) in the UK and in Brussels, supported by both Labour and Conservative MEPs, the European Parliament’s lead MEP on the issue, Dutch Liberal Jeanine Hennis-Plasschaert, has today called on the Commission to withdraw its proposal.

The Regulation seeks to establish a mandatory system requiring Member States to create a quality label guaranteeing security of the supply chain. It would apply not only to goods coming in to the EU from abroad or travelling between EU member states, but to items being transported within one country. Therefore, even small firms taking their products from Leeds to London would be affected. It would also affect businesses across all sectors from manufacturing to retail because each is a step in the supply chain from factory to shop.

Tina Sommer, FSB EU Affairs Chairman, said:

“We are relieved to see that the European Parliament is listening to the voice of small business and to commonsense. This latest development will come as welcome news to the hundreds of thousands of small businesses that would have been ruined by this proposal.

“Small businesses are ready to play their part in combating the threat of terrorism, but the Commission’s proposal is a heavy-handed and bureaucratic approach that would put many people out of work without actually increasing security.

“Parliamentarians from the EU’s three main political groups now agree with the FSB that this proposal is ill-conceived. We now reiterate our call to the European Commission to drop it immediately and to work with business, not against it, in tackling the threat of terrorism.”



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Federation of Small Businesses

Federation of Small Businesses

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