Committee on the Internal Market and Consumer Protection Ordinary meeting
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IMCO European Parliament
Follow its sittingsYeah, thank you for the presentation of the draft opinion. And now we have the opportunity to hear the shadows. We start with the EPP with Henrik Dahl.
Henrik Dahl
Thank you, Chair. First of all, I would like to thank the rapporteur for the work she has already put into this file. We very much welcome the Commission's proposal as a strong first step towards a more efficient and predictable regulatory framework. I plan to table a few amendments to further strengthen the proposal. In particular, I'm going to seek to improve the predictability of the certification system, provide greater legal certainty for manufacturers, and simplify the number of technical provisions.
I also intend to propose targeted improvements to the framework for integral drug-device combination products, including a clearer division between the MDR and pharmaceutical legislation, as well as amendments concerning orphan products. Furthermore, I would like to flag that the Commission's proposed changes on in-house devices and the reprocessing of single-use devices do not constitute simplification. Instead, they risk creating additional burdens. I will therefore table amendments that seek to seek a more industry-friendly approach on these points. I look forward to the upcoming negotiations and I hope we can reach a balanced compromise that strengthens the single market, supports innovation, and ensures that Europe remains an attractive place to develop and manufacture medical technologies.
Thank you.
Thank you so much. So the next shadow I see in the room is Cynthia Nimo-Shu for Renew.
Cynthia Ní Mhurchú
Danke, Chair. Thank you very much and sincere thanks to Maria, my dear colleague from S&D, and also to my colleague from EPP thus far contributed, but Maria has done a huge body of work as rapporteur for this opinion and I thank you and I look forward to the negotiation going forward. So, MedTech devices. Look, I don't need to remind everybody that millions of people across Europe have better lives thanks to medical devices, but what we want to ensure is that the people of Europe get the medical devices at the same times as the people of other countries and that our MedTech industry here is not frustrated or stymied or prevented in any way by delivering for our patients. Because Maria is quite right and my EPP colleague is quite right, this should be balanced and this should be patient-centered, but it also equally has to be competitive, has to be competitive for the industry, as my colleague from EPP said, has to make sure that industry in the MedTech sector feel that they can launch in Europe first and foremost and not look to other markets.
So look, we know how MedTech has empowered the health of our European citizens, but I just want to mention that the sector employs 930,000 people across Europe, 50,000 of those happen to be based in my home country, Ireland, and I have personally, as my part of my duty as an MEP, I've witnessed how these devices are designed and manufactured and how they are licensed and how they are rolled out. I've met with several MedTech companies, but I've also met with patients and I've also seen the difference that can happen to their lives. Now, what we are seeing on the business side is how complex and how duplicated regulation is absolutely not only slowing things down for the companies, but preventing patients from getting these devices. These are the patients that vote for us, that want us to get this directive right, updated in the correct fashion. So we are losing our medical device industry to other parts of the world and the world-class innovation companies that we have in Europe, they are seeking our support and the Commission has led out on proposing a lot of simplification measures and we are at the first round of negotiation and I do see that some of that simplification has been counterbalanced by my good friend the rapporteur in relation to some simplification being removed.
So whilst I absolutely appreciate and I respect everybody's viewpoint, I'm looking forward to the negotiations for the give and take because I do believe that we want our competitiveness back at the heart of the MedTech sector in Europe. It's fundamental, this competitiveness to the sector. It's fundamental though also not just for jobs, not just for industry, but also for our patients. Thank you, Chair, I look forward to working with my colleagues.
Anna Cavazzini
Thank you very much. From the Greens, no one is here. Anna, you want to speak for the Left or no? No. Any other member who wants to come in?
Ah, yeah, Andreas. Okay.
Andreas Schwab
Yeah, good morning, colleagues, good morning, Chairwoman. First of all, I also would like to thank our colleague Maria for her presentation. I think it's a very important moment to discuss about what happened to the medical devices sector because of the PIP scandal, which was a scandal, our regulation went far beyond what was good for that sector. And the result is we are missing European medical products today. We get them from the US and from China and from Japan, but there is no European stronghold anymore and that is super, super scaring.
And therefore I would like to come back first of all on the reflection of the PIP scandal. The PIP scandal was a criminal offense. It was not the lacking controls. There was the TÜV going there, but unfortunately they were also criminal. So we should not confuse legal application and criminality.
We will not make the laws better if we don't find a tool to fix and to fight against criminality. And on that we are totally in agreement. We have to make sure that controls are happening, that they are also coming surprise, so that what has been happening there cannot happen anymore. But the products, they are unfortunately sometimes the reason for an intervention, but also doctors have to put them right.
So the hip scandal is referred to quite often, but the hips were fine. The problem were that the doctors have put them not in the right manner, and this is done by courts as a result. It's not my interpretation. So we have to make sure that products are safe, but we have to also make sure that products are not put into a basket of unsafe tools whilst they have been wrongly placed. And I know that this is all very personal because there are families that have people that have been damaged, that have been suffering.
And so I know that it's emotional, and I think we should therefore really get the facts right. The last point that has been referred to is the AI tool. There is no doubt that there needs to be a control on AI. No one is discussing this. The question is only, should there be an AI control in the medical device sector and in the AI Act, so twice, or is it okay if there is only one control?
And I have to tell you, I don't see why there should be two of these controls. AI has to be safe, but there are plenty of medical devices that are about to come, for example, pills that you swallow that make a control by video of your whole body. If we don't motivate people to invent on that and to work on that, we will have a problem for our patients in the long run. And therefore, I hope that we find a compromise on this report that makes really the point, as my colleagues from the Liberals and from Denmark, Henrik, has said, on innovation, but for sure with safety for patients. Thank you very much.
Thank you. Any other member who wants to come in? If not, I give the floor to the Commission, and I welcome Flora Giorgio, Head of Unit Medical Devices from DG SANTE.
Flora Giorgio
Thanks a lot, Madam Chair, and thanks to the rapporteur and the colleagues and the members for sharing their view. And actually, I'm very pleased of the objectives that are outlined in the draft opinion. And I think, as others said, this proposal really comes with the objective of putting Europe back where it should be, the capacity of innovate and have a competitive and striving sector, not only for the benefit of the economy, but actually, as was said, for patient safety. I mean, this proposal is there, this simplification is needed to ensure that innovative devices are on the European market for the benefit of patients. There is no patient safety without devices in the hospital.
And that's the challenge we are facing, and that's why the Commission is coming with the initiative, which is indeed a simplification. It's a simplification that aims at delivering a more proportionate, cost-effective, and predictable framework and reducing burden when those do not impair patient safety. And that's where we come from. And many of the provisions go, and all the provisions actually go in that direction. And also, we see that the draft opinion goes also in that direction with many of the amendments.
But I would like to raise some, you know, comments for consideration because we see while I think many of the amendments go on the shared objective, they may have unintended consequences in relation to the proportionality and the simplification that we really aim at having. And it was the mentioning of in-house devices. In-house devices were mentioned. In-house devices is an important category of devices, very targeted, very specific for very dedicated cases for patient population and healthcare. And for respond to public health needs and emergency.
The COVID emergency really showed the importance of transferring those devices between institutions and the importance also to ensure that healthcare institutions can continue to innovate and do address these specific needs that indeed are very niche and specific needs. So it is important to get that provision right because the current framework is actually challenging healthcare professionals and hospitals in delivering what they do and what is their mission, which is delivering care to patients.
So that's a point I wanted to underline, as well the recertification was mentioned. Recertification is again another important element to ensure the life cycle and the monitoring of the technology. And it was a very much welcomed reference to the scandals. These were fraud. We are not giving a benefit or favor to our patient if we, if I may say, do maybe the same mistake or the same approach was done in the first, when this review was adopted, well, this regulatory framework was adopted.
So while we understand the need of a process and, you know, to maintain a high level of scrutiny throughout the life cycle, and the current framework does foresee that, we consider a bit of a more flexible mechanism to actually have a more risk-based targeted approach that we propose through the periodic review could actually benefit the system and not have a one-size-fits-all approach, which is what the current framework does. So a number of, of proposal from our perspective goes in that direction and there are instrument maybe that we could work more, you know, constructively to find a middle way. Digital, the reference to the interplay between AI and medical device. I think this is import, a very important to clarify. The Commission proposal does not at all aim at departing from the AI requirement.
On the contrary, wants to deliver what the draft opinion aim at, legal clarity and simplification. We would need to incorporate, and we have this opportunity because this legislation in open, is open, the AI requirement in the MDR so that there is one process of certification, notified bodies, codes, timing are aligned and, and cost are optimized. The, the current status quo, and we see it in the way it's implemented, would result in parallel framework. And one of these framework, which is the MDR, is highly regulated already and already certifying these product. The other is being built.
We cannot afford in the medical device sector another crisis of shortages, delays, and these, and these devices not being available on the market. So that's where we really consider this move to be in line with the simplification objective and in line of the objective of the rapporteur to actually deliver legal clarity. And we are happy of course to continue to discuss in order to address the, the most suitable mechanism. The last point, which again, shared objective of transparency and access to information. I think we should look also at the Commission proposal in the context of today.
Since last month, Eudamed, which is the major IT system underpinning the legislation, is actually mandatory for use. So a number of report, including the summary of safety performance report, is actually available to all players, patient, professional. This is a very technical report, but is actually there to be consulted and to be accessed. And we consider that, forseen an additional version of this document only for patient, while a noble objective, is again the proportionality approach. One of these document cost between 40 and 72,000 euro per manufacturer.
We consider this doc, this money better spent in innovation for the patient. We know that, and because especially because Eudamed will provide access to additional information, current technology can even help a more technical SSCP to be translated in a more understandable language for patient when this document is targeted for professional. Because when this document is targeted for patient, the transparency element will be there and the understandable, the, you know, the language in which this will be drafted will be targeted to patient. So in an ideal world would be a great possibility to have a two dedicated targeted report, but in the reality we are living in, we should really keep proportionality in mind because we do need to have a system which is simpler and more proportionate in the best interest of, of European patients. I close here and I thank you for your attention.
Anna Cavazzini
Thank you very much. And with that, I give the floor back to the rapporteur.
Maria Guzenina
Thank you, dear Chair. I appreciate the opinions that have been voiced out here this morning and especially very positive output from the Commission side. I think working all together on this file and appreciating everybody's point, the entry points of the views, I think we will have a balanced outcome at the end. So I'm looking forward to the negotiations. Thank you, Chair.
Thank you so much. So we have our vote at 9:30 and I suggest we do a short break because not all the members are yet here. So we start the votes at 9:30.
Okay, dear colleagues, let's start with our voting session. I have the feeling most of the groups are complete. We have one vote on our agenda. It is item 20, institutional aspects of artificial intelligence in the context of European integration. It's a draft opinion to an AFCO own-initiative report.
Our rapporteur is George Pirera, and before we go to the votes, I want to give the rapporteur the floor.
Gheorghe Piperea
Thank you, Madam President. It was good work together with, we managed to have good compromise amendments. I think that we are now able to vote it because there are no, no other issues about these compromises. So thank you, so let's vote.
Anna Cavazzini
Thank you very much. We do a short test vote to see if everything is fine and if enough MEPs are here. So I open the test vote. Just a test. Everyone has their cards in, everything is working, no problems.
It's not working? Do you want to try another machine or? It means we can start. So we anyhow start by show of hands with compromise 2. Who is in favor?
Who is against? Abstentions? Adopted. Compromise 3, who is in favor? Who is against?
Abstentions? Adopted. Compromise 1, who is in favor? Who is against? Abstentions?
Adopted. And now we go to the final vote by roll-call vote. I open the vote. Close the vote. Adopted with 33 in favor, 5 minus and 1 abstention.
Congratulations. So this closes our voting session. We continue in one minute.
Okay, dear colleagues, I suggest we continue with agenda item 21, the general budget of the European Union for the financial year 2027, all sections. This is, of course, as you know, a yearly exercise. Obviously, we are doing an opinion to the budget file, and the rapporteur for our opinion is Piotr Müller. And today we have the opportunity to discuss the draft opinion. So I give the floor to the rapporteur.
Piotr Müller
Thank you, I will speak Polish. Szanowni państwo, mam zaszczyt przedstawić projekt opinii do wytycznych budżetu Unii Europejskiej na 2027 rok. Jak wiemy, przed nami generalnie jest debata dotycząca ram wieloletnich, ale jeszcze chwilę jesteśmy w tych poprzednich ramach finansowych, o których też chwilę chciałbym powiedzieć. Głównym założeniem tej opinii jest prosta zasada, że my staramy się, aby było mniej biurokracji, ale jednocześnie, żebyśmy zapewniali te same standardy bezpieczeństwa i dbali o większą konkurencyjność Europy. Więc budżet na 2027 rok właśnie musi służyć tym celom.
Po pierwsze, opinia kładzie nacisk na realne wsparcie dla małych i średnich przedsiębiorstw. Jak wiemy, one w dużej mierze, w ogromnej części tworzą miejsca pracy w Polsce i w całej Europie. I w związku z tym te firmy też potrzebują uproszczeń i wsparcia, nie tylko kolejnych formularzy. Zresztą to konsekwentnie też robimy w ramach Omnibusów, więc to się wszystko łączy w całość, jeżeli chodzi o nasze ostatnie działania. Po drugie, chcemy wzmocnienia realizacji prawdziwej, prawdziwego konsekwentnego realizowania przepisów wynikających z unii celnej i nadzoru nad rynkiem.
W związku z tym też w tej opinii wskazujemy na to, że jednym z celów dla Unii Europejskiej powinna być walka z niebezpiecznymi, niezgodnymi z prawem produktami wpływającymi do Europy, między innymi z krajów azjatyckich. I tutaj w tej opinii też to podkreślamy, że powinny ulec wzmocnieniu finansowemu te instytucje, które właśnie odpowiadają za nasze bezpieczeństwo. Po trzecie, ta opinia podkreśla też wymiar bezpieczeństwa i wskazujemy na to, że państwa graniczne, w tym Polska, powinny być wspierane, jeżeli chodzi o działania też w zakresie przemysłu obronnego, ale w ogóle Europa powinna tutaj w zakresie konkurencyjności w obszarze przemysłu zbrojeniowego właśnie poczynić kolejne kroki, również finansowe. Po czwarte, wskazujemy, że fundusz konkurencyjności powinien być wzmacniany po to, aby faktycznie Europa mogła lepiej działać na poziomie globalnym, jeżeli chodzi o konkurencyjność. I też podkreślam w tej opinii, że transformacja klimatyczna nie może być realizowana kosztem konkurencyjności gospodarki europejskiej.
Tutaj trzeba zachować naprawdę zdrowy balans, aby nie doszło do sytuacji, w której sami ograniczamy swoją konkurencyjność przez przyspieszenie celów, które były wskazywane w agendzie europejskiej. I też na to wskazuję, aby właśnie budżet na 2027 rok odpowiednio łagodził skutki finansowe i administracyjne tych regulacji środowiskowych. Dziękuję bardzo.
Okay, so with that we go to the round of shadows. For the EPP, I don't have, ah, pardon.
Pablo Arias Echeverría
Thank you, chair, I'm going to speak in Spanish. Y bueno, pues hay poco que decir.
Yo creo que está muy bien traída la posición del ponente, con el que espero trabajar en breve para poder hacer lo más rápidamente esta opinión, puesto que comparto prácticamente todo lo que ha trasladado. Y por tanto, si metemos alguna enmienda será para intentar enriquecer un poco más el texto, pero comparto las líneas que ha trasladado y por tanto no habrá ninguna enmienda que vaya en contra del planteamiento del señor Müller. Muchas gracias.
Okay. For S&D, no one. PfE, Svenja, Renew shadow is not here. For the Greens, I'm the shadow, so I want to... Ah, sorry.
I didn't have you in my list. Sorry.
Pál Szekeres
Köszönöm a szót, tisztelt elnöknő, tisztelt előadó úr, magyarul fogok beszélni. A 2025-ös uniós költségvetésről szóló véleménytervezettel kapcsolatos vitában ma Schaller-Baross Ernő árnyékelőadónk nevében szólalok fel, aki sajnos nem tud jelen lenni. Örömteli hír, hogy gyermeküket várják, és innen is sok boldogságot és sikert kívánok ezen az úton. Köszönjük a jelentéstevő munkáját, és üdvözöljük a véleménytervezetet. Egyetértünk az alapvető célkitűzésekkel.
Fontosnak tartjuk, hogy az európai költségvetésnek nem több szabályt, hanem több versenyképességet, nem több adminisztrációt, hanem több nemet kérdést kell szolgálnia. A következő évi költségvetésnek kiemelten kell támogatni az európai versenyképességet, a vállalkozások működését, és természetesen a magas szintű fogyasztóvédelmet. Örömmel látjuk, hogy az előadó az európai ipar és versenyképesség kérdéseire is rávilágít. Egyre több visszajelzés érkezik arról, hogy aránytalan szabályozási és klímaterhek valós gazdasági hátrányt okoznak, különös tekintettel az ipari termelés és a beruházások területére. Ezt a költségvetésben is rendezni kell ezt a kérdést.
Kiemelten fontosnak tartjuk a vám- és piacfelügyelet megerősítését. Erre azért van szükség, hogy a tisztességes európai vállalkozások ne kerüljenek versenyhátrányba, és a fogyasztóvédelem is valóban érvényesüljön. Fontosnak tartjuk a hatékonyságnövelést, az adminisztratív terhek csökkenését, és bízunk benne, hogy a hogy az anyag ezeket a célokat fogja szolgálni. Még egyszer elnézést kérek, hogy Schaller Ernő, Schaller-Baross Ernő úr nem tudott részt venni, viszont nagyon várja az együttműködést a rapportőrrel. Köszönöm szépen.
Anna Cavazzini
No, thank you very much. So now for the Greens, I also want to thank the rapporteur for the draft opinion and all your work. I think we all agree that next year's budget is the final budget in the current MFF and as such will be the bridging to the next multi-annual budget funding also for the single market related policies. So we need to make sure that the next year's EU budget contributes strongly to better functioning of the single market and customs, but also that it will ensure strong support to EU's just and digital transitions and sustainability, that it will strengthen protection of our consumers and that it will provide adequate support to the citizens and companies in order to be able to benefit fully from the single market. And in this sense, we as Greens will table our amendments to the opinion, but also budgetary amendments aiming to reinforce the financial allocations in the EU budget for these priorities.
We propose targeted top-ups for customs, consumer protections, market surveillance, the standardization process for the SMEs and single market governance tools. So thanks again and looking forward to the cooperation. I think for the Left and ESN no one, and the Commission is also not here, correct, or is anybody from the Commission here? No. Then I give the floor back to the rapporteur.
Piotr, please.
Dziękuję bardzo. Dziękuję za za te głosy pozytywne. Oczywiście jestem otwarty na te poprawki techniczne. Mam nadzieję, że szybko zamkniemy to sprawozdanie, a zaraz usiądziemy też nad inną pracą, czyli ramami wieloletnimi, bo myślę, że tam w szczególności będziemy musieli się skupić na tych celach długofalowych. Dziękuję bardzo.
Anna Cavazzini
Thank you so much. That concludes agenda item 21. We come to agenda item 22, suspending the application of the rules in appointment of an authorized representative for extending producer responsibility for batteries and waste batteries and packaging and packaging waste. So this is also part of this omnibus package thing. We are doing as IMCO committee an opinion under Rule 57.
The rapporteur in ENVI is Ingeborg Ter Laak from the EPP. 36 amendments were tabled to the draft opinion and the vote in IMCO is scheduled for the 14th of July, so our next IMCO session. So today we can talk about the amendments and compromise amendments. The rapporteur for the opinion is Klára Dostálová from PfE, but I think she cannot be here today and also Mr. Szekeres will replace her. So I give you the floor.
So could you present the intervention of Ms. Dostálová? Mr. Szekeres, could you start?
I'm the jolly joker now. So sorry, I need some more minutes because I just realized Ms. Dostálová is not here. I just received the document. Just briefly I can tell you.
Anna Cavazzini
Yeah, or if you want I give first the floor to the Commission, then you have more time.
Yeah.
Perfect. Then I give first the floor to the Commission and yeah, probably the groups can distribute a little bit when their rapporteurs and shadows are not here. So I give the floor to the Commission representative Carolina Da Cunha, Deputy Head of Unit for Circular Economy and Secondary Raw Materials from DG ENV. Welcome.
Anna Cavazzini
Yeah, okay, because the Commission is not here either. That's... but then I give the floor. This is a funny session today, I have to say.
Pál Szekeres
The summer holiday already started, so... In six weeks, no, I mean... Okay. So, apologize on the name of our patriot rapporteur Klára Dostálová. I will present our compromises on the table.
In our view, the rejection of the Commission proposal would still be the most practical option, given the decision made in the Council. However, as a political message to our colleagues and to enterprises operating in the EU, the rapporteur's team has come up with the following compromises. On the substance, the compromise amendment target only micro and small enterprises and are also temporary pending the entry into force of a comprehensive horizontal framework, namely the forthcoming Circular Economy Act. They address the suspension of the authorized representative obligation for extended producer responsibility under the Batteries Regulation and the Packaging and Packaging Waste Regulation. The timeline of our compromises calls for a three-year suspension, running until 1st of July 2029, and the date of entry into force of the forthcoming Circular Economy Act, whichever is earlier.
This reflect amendments put forward by the other political groups and the next with the border legislative horizon. Therefore, I call our colleagues to support these compromise amendments. They send a clear and constructive signal to business, preserving our legislative ambition for the longer term. Thank you.
Anna Cavazzini
Thank you very much, and also for jumping in. We can try to do the round of shadows, but I have also my doubts. Is there anybody who wants to speak from, for example, EPP or S&D or anybody else on the file?
I can do it again.
You can do it for all the groups! And the Commission is now here. Okay. Welcome. I had announced you already, but I now do it again.
So I welcome very much Carolina Da Cunha, Deputy Head of Unit for Circular Economy, Secondary Raw Materials from DG ENV. Welcome.
Carolina DA CUNHA
Yes, thank you very much, and good morning to everyone. We have read with great interest all the amendments, and thank you for sharing your comments on the draft reports also today. So I just wanted to explain again that first of all in relation to the EPR, so extended producer responsibility obligations, this suspension does not alter the other obligations. We have stated that in other meetings, such as reporting, such as the payment of the fees, registration for producers, so it only concerns the authorized representative provisions, which we propose to suspend until a certain deadline and only for EU producers. And that is I think also important in light of the proposed amendments.
So there again I would like to explain that the proposal does not alter the underlying sectoral legislation obligations for third-country producers. So for instance, Packaging and Packaging Waste Regulation also has provisions for third-country producers in terms of authorized representative obligations, and it is up to the Member States' discretion whether or not to oblige producers to have an authorized representative. And it remains like this. So that's how the suspension was constructed.
Plus we added this additional flexibility of alternative means for Member States to ensure compliance. And again, this is for Member States to decide what these alternative means would be. There was a discussion on the timeline, and indeed the proposed length of the suspension was linked to the works on the Circular Economy Act. And also the reason why we proposed this suspension was because this work, the reform of the extended producer responsibility under the CEA, would take some time, could be quite lengthy. So we thought it was very much advisable to already provide for a relief of administrative burden now in terms of authorized representative while we work on the more comprehensive reform of EPR under the CEA.
The precise date of how long this should apply can be discussed. We intended to link it to the adoption or rather application of the future CEA for legal certainty reasons, but of course we have calculated a date more or less approximately, so we can also link this better. But the intention was indeed to stitch together the CEA and the suspension. And finally on the scope, there are discussions on the adaptation of the scope. Already partial suspension is better than no suspension in our view.
But of course if we limit it to the size of enterprises, it will raise questions of, you know, fragmentation of the single market because it will apply to some enterprises, it will not apply to others, and the market share is also a question because it will be different for different product groups. And it will be more burden for national authorities to oversight this. So they will have to check, are you small, are you micro, and therefore do you have to have an AR or not. So it could also be a sort of an incentive for companies to stay under the threshold of, you know, micro or small potentially. Big companies are often established in each and every Member State, so for them we do not expect that an obligation to have an authorized representative would change that much because they probably already have that in most cases.
But again, that we don't have firm evidence, but yes, that would be probably the case. So again, thank you very much for all the discussion and useful input, and we're also working on this EPR reform under the CEA. So yes, we're awaiting your decision on what the Parliament wants to do with this particular file. Thank you very much.
Anna Cavazzini
Thank you so much for being here, for commenting and for valuable input. This will definitely enrich the discussion about the file. This concludes agenda item 22. And we have now our exchange of views or like little hearing with the market surveillance authorities, but I think they're not here. We are a little bit early because... are they all here?
One second.
Perfect. No, actually we can now continue because everyone is already here, everyone is connected online. That's great. So we can continue directly with agenda item 23. You know that the IMCO committee is doing a regular exchange of views on illegal and dangerous products entering the single market, where we invite regularly, for example, different companies to scrutinize them, the Commission.
And now I'm very happy that we have from basically the ground, market surveillance authorities here who explain us how their work is actually being conducted, but also from their perspective, how they are dealing with this huge influx of dangerous products from, for example, third countries that are not complying with our standards. So I'm very happy that we have a guest from the Italian market surveillance authority, Ms. Nadia Sosio, director from the Directorate General for Consumer Affairs and Markets, Division 2, Technical Regulations, Product Safety and Conformity, Product and Service Quality. I'm also happy that we have also a guest from the Saxon State Ministry for Economic Affairs, Labour, Energy and Climate Action here. And from the European Commission, Felicia Stoica, Head of Unit, Market Surveillance from DG GROW. So we start with the guest from Italy.
I give the floor to Nadia Sosio for seven minutes.
Nadia Sosio
Okay, good morning. Thank you everyone. Thank you for having us and for setting the online meeting. I am Nadia Sosio from the Ministry of Enterprises and Made in Italy. I'm here at the Directorate General for Consumer and Market.
And yeah, the office that I'm head of is the Division 2, which is like a market surveillance authority first of all. Next slide, please. Yeah, so the European single market is undergoing a phase of profound transformation, driven by the rapid growth of e-commerce and the expansion of online sales platforms operating on a global scale. There are changes in consumption patterns and which are combined also with the expansion of online sales of platforms that are established outside of the European Union. This has consequently increased the risk of placing illegal or dangerous product on the single market.
And online purchasing has a critical aspect because consumers are unable to physically inspect a product before the transaction happens, before they buy it. And therefore they must base their evaluation on elements such as images, descriptions, reviews and price. And in this regard, the preliminary checks become particularly important, including identifying the seller, having the ability of reaching out the manufacturer, or having the possibility to look at the warnings or the labelling, the product descriptions, or in general also the plausibility of the price and the reliability of reviews. Therefore, the ability to intervene in distance sales has become crucial to prevent the spread of non-compliant, illegal or dangerous products in order to protect consumer and the environment and also to, you know, ensure fair competition among economic operators. Next slide, please.
Okay, yeah. We thought that it could be a good idea to have a little background on small parcels because within the framework of market surveillance, the phenomenon of small parcels originating from e-commerce platforms is particularly significant, as it represents a major challenge for product safety and consumer protection. Small parcels account for the majority of global trade in counterfeit and illegal goods. And China continues to be the primary country of origin of this kind of products.
Italy is among the main European hubs for these online purchases of goods of value under 150 euros, and shipments below this threshold have significantly increased the volume of customs traffic, therefore having a direct impact on customs authority and also on market surveillance authorities. This high volume of shipments and their fragmentation and the presence of operators that are located mostly outside of the European Union make market surveillance authorities have a big burden in inspecting and verifying all the products that are being sent online. Next slide, please. Therefore, that's the reason why market surveillance authorities need to have an action that has to be targeted and has to be based on clear criteria in order to make online surveillance more efficient with the available resources. Therefore, the market surveillance authorities aim to prevent, identify, and combat the placing and making available on the market of non-compliant or dangerous products through a risk-based approach that they share also with the customs authorities and with the finance authorities.
In particular, we focus on the most widely used products as well as of innovative products that are being sent online. This is supported, of course, by the use of IT tools and shared databases that enable timely and reliable information exchange and the detection also of potentially dangerous products. Next slide, please. But of course, the online market surveillance faces many challenges. The first one is the difficulties in contacting non-EU economic operators because the points of contact do not always exist, even though they should be mandatory under the GPSR.
There is also a lack of awareness among importers because they sometimes believe that the obligations only are belonging to the operators that are outside of the European market and not inside of the European market. They have this lack of awareness, which is also present in consumers because they do not know exactly what their rights are. They don't know exactly that a product description should be on the product. They don't know exactly that the economic operator should be available to them. So the lack of awareness is something that we find very constant, both in consumers and in economic operators.
Therefore, we also see that there's a kind of complexity of coordination among authorities because, for example, in Italy, but we know that it's the same, for example, also in Germany, we have different market surveillance authorities based on each and every product, and therefore the coordination sometimes is very hard. Also, we find it very difficult to integrate the IT systems because they are not fully interoperable, and therefore the fact of putting manually all the products online has a big burden on the operators that are doing the market surveillance.
Next slide, please. Okay, but like in all of this framework, Italy actively participates in major European projects on online market surveillance issues and has established agreements with like the control authorities in order to tackle immediately like the products that are being sold online. In particular, Italy is involved in the European Joint Action project aimed at verifying compliance with Article 4 of the Market Surveillance Regulation with a focus on online offers from economic operators that are not established within the EU but place products on the EU market. And the activity aims to verify both the appointment of an authorized representative and the existence of a written mandate as required by the regulation. Italy also participates in the SWEEP project, which aims to verify the compliance of product listings published by online marketplaces that is mandatory under the GPSR.
And for the future, Italy aims to participate in the JAHCOB-VLOPS project, which will aim to promote compliance and product safety regarding the very large online platforms. And next slide, please. Okay, so over the past year, there has been fortunately a significant increase in reports of non-compliant products. Well, first of all, we have we use two important platforms, which are also mandatory. One is ICSMS and the other one is the Safety Gate.
And especially on ICSMS, we had a rising in the uploads of non-compliant products of like 30% increase. While instead, the Safety Gate platform plays a crucial role in ensuring timely information exchange between the European Commission and the national authorities. And also in this, Italy ranks first in the European Union. And this is especially thanks to our one of our control authorities, which is the finance authority. In Italian, we call it Guardia di Finanza, which help us into detect all the dangerous products and notifies them to the Commission through this important portal.
Next slide, please. Okay, so we know that the European Product Act is something that all the member states are working on and that the Commission is also intends to promote like a new pact and a review of the Market Surveillance Regulation. So I guess this could be like a way to address the challenges that we have been talking about. And so, first of all, maybe it would be interesting to strengthen the cooperation among member states, improving data and platform interoperability, and enhancing the role not only of consumers but also of economic operators. Because what we notice in our market surveillance authorities, especially online, is that the economic operators, as I said before, lack awareness.
Therefore, it would be very important to make them more responsible of their obligations. And also, like, we find it very difficult to have access to all data, and it would be very important for us, like, if the Commission could grant, like, a major interoperability among these platforms, including ICSMS, which is used also for many other topics, and the Safety Gate, for example, because they at the moment do not talk to each other. But in general, we rely on strengthening the cooperation among Member States, even though we also have to notice that the lack of resources is also an issue. And of course, if market surveillance online has to be implemented, we are looking for also other ways to have more resources. Thank you.
Thank you so much for this valuable insight in your work and also the concrete policy recommendations. So anyhow, later we come back with potential questions to you, but now we will also listen to the guest from Germany. So I give the floor to Mr. Kretschmer.
Michael Kretschmer
Ja, schönen guten Tag und vielen Dank, dass ich hier sprechen darf. Und zunächst einmal ein dickes Lob für den treffenden Titel der Veranstaltung, denn viel zu oft nutzen die Marktüberwachungsbehörden den klaren und eindeutigen Begriff illegal nämlich leider nicht und verwenden an seiner Stelle eher nichtkonform. Ich kann jetzt schon sagen, dass ich eigentlich alle Punkte der Vorrednerin unterstütze und bin auch froh, dass ich jetzt mehr auf konkrete Beispiele eingehen kann. Next slide, please. Next slide.
Thanks. Wie schaut der Arbeitsalltag der Marktüberwachung aus? Ja, dieser ist manchmal recht lustig, wie dieses Beispiel einer Bedienungsanleitung zeigt. Die formale Prüfung der Konformität, wozu auch die Bedienungsanleitung zählt, sorgt mitunter für Kopfschütteln und bei uns auch sehr oft für Lacher. An dieser Stelle ist recht offensichtlich, dass vermutlich niemand diesen Anweisungen folgen wird.
Wie es dann allerdings bei den Warnhinweisen oder bei eingebauten Fehlern ausschaut, das weiß man eben nicht. Also offensichtliche Fehler sind relativ leicht und unspezifisch. Next slide, please. Next slide. Hier sind wir jetzt, bei diesem Beispiel haben wir die formale Prüfung jetzt hinter uns gebracht und steigen in die technische Begutachtung von Produkten ein.
Und hier handelt es sich um eine Lampe, bei der der Hersteller sich offensichtlich nicht ganz im Klaren war, welche elektrische Schutzklasse er eigentlich am Ende erreichen wollte. Man sieht, dass das Produkt intern eine andere Verkabelung hat als die, die am Ende auch nach außen geführt wird, um das Produkt ans Stromnetz anzuschließen. Solche Sachen fallen uns auch zum Beispiel sehr oft bei Steckdosenleisten auf. Next slide, please. Ja, dieses Beispiel hier führt uns die Wichtigkeit der Marktüberwachung deutlich und ungeschönt vor Augen.
Hier handelt es sich eindeutig um ein gefährliches Produkt, wobei kein Verbraucher damit rechnen muss, dass auf der 5-Volt-Ausgangsseite des Netzteils plötzlich die 230 Volt der Eingangsspannung anliegen. Derartige Produkte sind ausschließlich eben nicht, also in dem Fall eben nicht durch formale Kontrollen, sondern nur durch technische Prüfungen ausfindig zu machen, genauso wie zum Beispiel auch, wenn Vergehen bezüglich der Chemie oder einer mangelnden Schutzwirkung zum Beispiel bei persönlicher Schutzausrüstung vorliegen. Und unser Ziel muss eben sein, eine angemessene Kontrolldichte aufrechtzuerhalten, um solche Produkte am Markt auch lokalisieren zu können.
Speaker 19
Next slide, please. Wie steht es um die Kontrolldichte? Ich habe auf dieser Folie mal das fiktive Beispiel von Akkuschraubern herausgesucht. Nehmen wir das Jahr 2000, da hatten wir in Sachsen vielleicht mit 50 verschiedenen am Markt befindlichen Akkuschraubermodellen zu tun. Wir hatten Testkapazitäten für ungefähr 25 dieser Einheiten und konnten damit eine Inspektionsdichte oder eine Kontrolldichte von circa 50 Prozent erreichen und damit auch auf den Markt zurückwirken.
Heute haben wir circa 1000 verschiedene Modelle, die man in den Online-Handelsplattformen seiner Wahl käuflich erwerben kann. Unsere Testkapazitäten sind aber weiterhin bei 25 geblieben. Ja, Sie sehen selbst, was mit der Kontrolldichte am Ende passiert. Ich möchte jetzt noch ein paar aktuelle Zahlen noch mit in den Raum werfen, die uns sicherlich auch allen zumindest zum Teil vorliegen. Ja, wir haben im Moment eine Importmenge von circa 5,9 Milliarden Einzelsendungen aus Drittstaaten.
Das macht pro Tag circa 15 Millionen Warensendungen aus in ganz Europa. Ja, für uns in Sachsen am Frachtflughafen Leipzig bedeutet das, dass täglich circa 2500 dieser Warensendungen Spielzeuge sind. Von diesen täglich 2500 Spielzeugen sind wir momentan mit unseren personellen Ressourcen in der Lage, vielleicht fünf davon uns genauer anzuschauen. Das bedeutet, wir liegen hier bei einer Kontrolldichte von circa 0,2 Prozent. Und dann würde ich jetzt auch einfach die rhetorische Frage stellen: Ist das eigentlich allen bewusst?
Offensichtlich nein, weil die allermeisten, die allermeisten Verbraucher gehen nämlich davon aus, dass jedes Produkt, das im Handel irgendwo auftaucht, durch die Behörden geprüft wird. Ja, wir hören sehr oft den Begriff CE-geprüft. Die Realität sieht aber anders aus. Da macht die Marktüberwachung lediglich Stichprobenkontrollen. Das hat sich auch jahrelang sehr gut bewährt, stößt mit dem heutigen Online-Handel aber massiv an seine Grenzen und bietet eine große offene Flanke für den Import illegaler Produkte.
Next slide, please. Den Online-Handel jetzt aber als alleinige Ursache für die aktuelle Situation verantwortlich zu machen, greift unserer Meinung nach aber etwas zu kurz. Der Online-Handel hat das Problem zwar massiv skaliert und ist deswegen natürlich auch Teil des Problems, aber der Kern liegt eigentlich darin, dass Hersteller und Händler aus Drittstaaten direkten Zugriff auf jeden einzelnen Verbraucher innerhalb des Binnenmarktes haben. Gleichzeitig aber überhaupt gar keine rechtlichen Konsequenzen fürchten müssen, wenn sie gegen die Vorschriften des Binnenmarktes verstoßen. Die Marktüberwachung hat gegenüber diesen Akteuren keine abschreckende Wirkung, weil sie eben nur Adressaten in der EU erreicht und die Handelsplattform eben keine Adressaten für die Marktüberwachung sind.
Next slide, please. Was können wir jetzt tun? Wir können die Möglichkeit eins in Betracht ziehen: einfach gar nichts machen, alles so lassen, wie es ist, und weiterhin viel Geld für relativ wenig Wirkung ausgeben.
Vielleicht können wir auch die Nummer zwei umsetzen, indem wir die Marktüberwachung vielleicht einfach einstellen und damit immerhin den innereuropäischen Herstellern die Wettbewerbsgleichheit wiederherstellen und sie dann eben einfach auch nicht für nicht konforme oder nicht oder illegale Produkte zur Konsequenz ziehen. Oder next slide please. Wir erinnern uns oder wir begreifen die Errungenschaften des Binnenmarkts, wie zum Beispiel den fairen Wettbewerb, den Verbraucherschutz oder den Umweltschutz als wirklich wichtig für uns und setzen die dritte Option um. Und wir versetzen die Marktüberwachung endlich wieder in die Rolle des Akteurs und gewinnen oder versuchen zumindest die Souveränität auf dem Binnenmarkt zurückzugewinnen. Next slide.
Ein paar Beispiele, wie das genau passieren könnte, sind vorhin schon gefallen. Ich möchte jetzt gar nicht so sehr auf alle hier noch mal eingehen, die meisten sind schon da. Vielleicht ein strategischer Punkt steht hier gleich als erstes. Wir brauchen in der Marktüberwachung auch dringend die Entkopplung vom starren Produktbezug hin zu einem systemischen Ansatz. Wir müssen gegen illegale Strukturen und Akteure vermehrt vorgehen können.
Das liegt mir persönlich sehr am Herzen. Die anderen Punkte können Sie bitte einfach selber noch weiter durchlesen. Meine Zeit ist jetzt rum. Next slide please. Ich bedanke mich für die Aufmerksamkeit.
Danke.
Anna Cavazzini
Ja, vielen herzlichen Dank. Und Sie haben ja auch einen interessanten Namen. Ich war kurz verwirrt, ob wir jetzt irgendwie den Ministerpräsidenten da haben. Aber natürlich sehr schön, dass Sie diesen Vortrag gehalten haben. So with that, we go to our next speaker from the Commission.
I welcome Felicia Stoica, Head of Unit Market Surveillance from DG GROW.
Felicia Streuzer
Yes, good morning everybody, Madam Chair, honorable members, distinguished representatives of the market surveillance authorities. Thank you again for organizing this exchange of views. It comes at the right moment. Of course, we are not short of evidence that illegal and dangerous products are entering the single market in growing volumes, often through channels that our framework was not designed to cover. What we need now is to make sure that the rule we have, the rules we have and the authorities that enforce them can keep up the pace.
This matters not only for consumer safety, but also it matters for many compliant businesses who are undercut every day by operators that play by different rules or by no rules at all. I know that this committee and the authorities that have intervened today are well aware of the operational reality on the ground, the rising volumes that I mentioned, limited resources and economic operators that are not always where or who they say they are. I would like to focus on two issues that in my exchanges also with market surveillance authorities came up time and time again. So the first one is the accountability and in particular the role of the authorized representative. You have heard the diagnosis here in this committee many times and there is also a broad agreement of the Commission's direction of travel.
So let me be concrete instead about what the European Product Act will change. Going forward, only importers and authorized representative will count as EU established economic operators responsible for product place on the single market. The authorized representative will carry responsibility and liability commensurate with importers, not a lighter or a symbolic obligation as we have today. This means identity verification, a recorded mandate between the authorized representative and third country manufacturer, but also sufficient financial coverage to fund product withdrawals when something goes wrong.
Together, these measures will close one of the most consequential gaps in our enforcement chain. Traceability is not an end in itself, it is a precondition for effective market surveillance, for swift recall action and ultimately for consumer protection. Once we know who is responsible, the next question is whether our authorities actually can act on that knowledge, and that brings me to the second point related to enforcement capacity. Identifying a responsible operator only matters if the authorities have the proper tools and resources to act on that information. We have taken many steps already, and the colleagues from market surveillance authorities have already pointed out to the joint actions across many Member States.
We have also improved some data sharing between market surveillance authorities and the Commission. We have also rolled out a number of detection tools, including web crawlers, that allow non-compliant products to be identified at the source rather than after they reach the consumers. So these are precisely the kind of practical solutions that we're looking and that also this Parliament has been calling for. But enforcement capacity is not only a question for the Commission, it is also a question for market surveillance authorities and for the Member States. National authorities need to connect their databases and their digital platforms for recording investigation to the EU market surveillance database.
Because an authority that cannot share the data or access the data in real time also prevents the enforcement at the EU level. I'm talking here about, for example, the DSA enforcement that relies on that particular data. This is what the European Product Act actually will seek to address. So we want to bring all those Member States that also are currently underperforming, and we have the statistics for that, we want to bring them up to the level of those performing well with an underperformance review that the Commission wants to propose as a measure under the European Product Act. But let us also be realistic about what remains to be done, that legislative ambition alone will not actually close all these gaps and that implementation matters and also, of course, capacity.
Market surveillance authorities across the Union still vary considerably in terms of resources but also digital readiness. And when we have weaknesses in one Member State, it quickly becomes a vulnerability for the whole single market. Madam Chair and honorable members, the principle guiding this work is a simple one: one product sold in Europe must be safe and compliant regardless where from it comes and regardless of how it is sold. So getting the accountability right by making authorized representative identifiable and liable and getting the capacity enforcement right by equipping national authorities with the tools and the resources they need are the two conditions for making that principle real in practice. So the Commission is looking forward to continuing the work on the European Product Act with the rapporteur but also with the Member States and to ensure that this ambition is matched on the ground.
Thank you.
Yeah, thank you so much. Now we have the time to ask questions. Laura.
Laura Ballarín Cereza
Muchas gracias, presidenta, y muchas gracias a los tres panelistas por las explicaciones y bueno, para complementar, yo también tengo algunos datos, ¿no?, como que la Asociación Británica de Juguetes acaba de publicar su último estudio sobre la calidad de los juguetes importados de terceros países y según estos datos, el 15% de los juguetes que se venden hoy en el Reino Unido provienen de terceros países y un 90% de los juguetes comprados en plataformas como AliExpress, Amazon, eBay, Shein o Temu no cumplen con los requisitos de seguridad.
Pero en la Unión Europea tampoco es muy distinto este panorama. La Asociación Española de Fabricantes de Juguetes acaba de publicar también un estudio en el que detecta que en plataformas como Allegro o Shein el porcentaje de la inseguridad de los juguetes era del 100% y en Amazon del 75%. Esto se suma también a denuncias como la de maldita.es que ha publicado recientemente una investigación alertando de que las plataformas como Facebook, Instagram, Google o TikTok han estado anunciando hasta un 45% de los medicamentos declarados ilegales por ley por la ley española durante los últimos dos años. Con lo cual creo que es muy evidente cómo todavía la situación de las grandes de las plataformas digitales hace que en Europa tengamos demasiados productos ilegales, peligrosos y en muchos casos también incluso falsificados. Y en este caso me gustaría también preguntarles más allá de las leyes que tenemos, cómo podemos explicarles a las familias que cuando están comprando productos en internet se aseguren de que son ilegales, de que son seguros, dónde se pueden fijar para que puedan confirmar que cumplen las garantías de seguridad y si no es así a quién tienen que recurrir.
Y en último caso, en segundo caso, perdón, preguntar si además de la EU Product Act, la Digital Fairness Act que tiene que venir, la Ley de Equidad Digital, puede también incorporar en a lo mejor en sus provisiones en relación a los influencers este tipo de provisiones, porque estamos viendo muchos influencers anunciando productos ilegales y peligrosos y también es una gran vía para que se compren estos productos. Muchas gracias.
Anna Cavazzini
Thank you very much. Elisabeth, do you want to come in or no? No. Probably I have one question to the representative from from Germany. So because you didn't have so much time, but actually we still have a little bit of time, could you elaborate a little bit also more on your proposals for solutions and probably identify also on some of them we are working already and the Commission mentioned it, for example, with the authorized representative and also with the customs reform, we actually will increase the access to customs data also for market surveillance authority.
So I think some of the proposals will be addressed, but where do you still see gaps? That would be my question. And with that, I give the floor back to the panelists. So we start with probably Ms. Suizo from Italy.
Nadia Sosio
Yes. Yeah, as for yeah, like we we think that the one of the missing parts of the system is that the as I said before, the the platforms like the ones that we use, like ICSMS and Safety Gate and also the platforms used by the customs authority are not interoperable. So I think that like the Commission should be tackling these kind of issues because we keep on having like troubles in identifying all the necessary data for for you know, for like having a complete framework of all the illegal and dangerous products or non-compliant products and so on.
But the fact of having a unique platform or different platforms that talk to each other would be very beneficial to us. So the fact of not having to insert each and every time all the products would be very important or even using AI solutions. We know for example from our customs authority that they are beginning to use AI instruments, AI tools for their risk assessment that therefore could be used as well for the market surveillance authorities. Thank you.
Thank you so much and with that to Mr. Kretschmer.
Michael Kretschmer
Ja, also ich kann dem auch nur zustimmen. Ich möchte jetzt auch noch mal darauf hinweisen, dass ja schon ganz viele Daten von uns eigentlich vorliegen. Dankenswerterweise durch die ganze Digitalisierung des Handels ja auch schon bei den ganzen Plattformen vorliegen.
Eine Sekunde bitte. Entschuldigung. Die Übersetzung funktioniert gerade nicht. Eine Sekunde, wir können Sie nicht verstehen. Der Ton ist sehr schlecht.
Können Sie noch irgendwas am Ton ändern? Weil ich glaube, die Übersetzer können nicht übersetzen und deswegen können wir es nicht verstehen.
Speaker 19
Okay. Ja, ich möchte, ich stimme dem zu, was die Kollegin aus Italien gesagt hat und ich möchte noch mal darauf hinweisen, dass viele digitale Daten, die wir bräuchten, um eben KI überhaupt auch für uns als Marktüberwachungsbehörden zu nutzen, ja schon vorliegen. Ja, also wir sind voll im digitalen Zeitalter gelandet und wir können aber auf diese Daten nicht zugreifen. Wir können keine Muster, keine Strukturen erkennen oder analysieren und das ist ein riesengroßes Problem für uns. Ja, also und was ich eben auch schon gesagt habe, dieser Einzelproduktbezug, das ist völlig aus der Zeit gefallen.
Wir haben, also unserer Meinung nach verdient man Geld mit nicht konformen Produkten. Ja, also der Hersteller von nicht konformem Spielzeug verdient sein Geld nicht mit Spielzeug, der verdient sein Geld mit Illegalität. Ja, und das muss in den Köpfen ankommen. So sollte man unserer Meinung nach denken, dann hat man vielleicht eine bessere Chance. Danke.
Anna Cavazzini
Thank you so much. So I think it was not being translated, so I try to translate very quickly. So the main problem he wants to reiterate is that they don't have any access to data, so they cannot see the patterns and that's why they cannot really do a risk-based control. And of course a product-by-product based control is not possible because it's too much, it's a tsunami of products. So they need a better access to data.
And he also basically said there needs to be a shift in mindset because most of the companies, for them they just make business with illegal products because there's so little chance that they will be caught that there's no deterrence mechanism or anything. So all the companies just, or a lot of companies just base their business model on illegal products and we have to have a shift in our thinking and understand that and only then we can really work on the solutions. I give the floor back to the Commission.
Felicia Streuzer
Yes, thank you very much and thanks to colleagues from, from the market surveillance authorities for the observations. When it comes to digitalization of the market surveillance and the enforcement aspects, it's true. What we have currently, we have some very important platforms at EU level. So one is the platform for EU-wide investigations, which is, is managed by the Commission where admittedly now we can see only 10% of the national investigations on the ground. So that's the visibility we have at EU level.
And that's a strong call also for the member states to make sure that they uptake the web service, so the tool that the Commission has rolled out in order to connect the national database with the EU level.
So that's the dimension national to the EU. When it comes to the EU level, we do have the customs database, we have the Safety Gate that was mentioned, and actually the interfaces are there. Just to mention that the interface between the ICSMS, which is the EU database for market surveillance investigations, has been rolled out in December last year. So what there is this interface between the ICSMS and the customs database, what needs to be done is that the national customs authorities, they connect to this database, and then we have a full picture of the system. So there is, I would say, a chantier, so it's work ongoing to revamp the whole system.
And moreover, because artificial intelligence was mentioned, we do have a project that will span over five to six years to revamp the whole system and to interconnect and to make the whole system interoperable and also to plug in AI tools. I mentioned web crawlers, document identification tools that we are already there, but we want to do more and to make sure that we have a system that communicates. And of course, with the European Product Act, we are ensuring that the right provisions are in place for data ownership, for data transfer, for privacy of data, which is very important, confidentiality of data. So all these are in the radar of the Commission. Yeah.
Anna Cavazzini
Thank you so much. If there's no further questions, this concludes the session or the exchange of views on illegal and dangerous products, the exchange with our market surveillance authorities. Thanks so much for our guests from the member states. I think it was very, very helpful to have also the very concrete insight from what you're doing on the ground and what your challenges are. And I think also we take your concerns very seriously and are working on, as you heard, several reforms in order to strengthen market surveillance capacity, in order to make sure that there's less or hopefully at some point no illegal and dangerous product anymore coming in.
So this concludes agenda item 23, and we come to agenda item 24, tackling single market barriers, the terrible ten. So you are all aware of the fact that the Commission published last year the single market strategy where they also identified the biggest or I don't know, but ten obstacles that are very concrete in the single market that are of horizontal nature and that we want or we need to overcome. And we thought, also together with the Commission, that it's nice that after one year more or less after the report has come out and after the Commission is also really working on addressing these terrible tens, to see where we stand, especially also regarding the member states, because as we see several times, I mean Andreas Schwab mentioned it yesterday again when we talked about the e-declaration, that often also the member states have their own obstacles in place and they like to keep them that way. So we are also very interested in hearing a little bit where the Commission stands with implementing the single market strategy and addressing the terrible ten and especially also vis-à-vis the member states and their homework that they have to do. So I'm happy that we have from the Commission Mr. Arvydas Staniukas, sorry, I hope I pronounced the name correctly, head of unit from the barrier removal unit in DG GROW.
And you have the floor for seven minutes. Welcome.
Alvydas Stančikas
Thank you very much. Good morning. And thank you very much for your attention to this terrible ten. Yes, as you said, it was first time this bit new approach focusing on barriers was proposed in Commission in a single market strategy last year. Yeah, it may sound a bit a little dramatic of course, terrible ten, but it's meant to be, and basically to attract attention, attract attention to these barriers which sometimes can be seen as technical, small, minor, but when you put all of them together, you know, tied them together, it became insurmountable barrier for business and citizens.
And I don't know if you have my slides, I sent, yeah, next slide we have this nice picture. Maybe next slide. Yeah, this Gulliver which which attached by by different, you know, cords, let's say, and each of this cord maybe can be small one and not so strong, but he attached and he cannot move because you have many of these cords. So this bit the same approach we trying to look, but also should be very clear when you look on each of this cord of this barrier we are not also so minor when you look, you know, in in deeply because, you know, we we I would say in constructional single market during the years we removed a lot of these barriers and it was definitely and I think we did a lot, all of us, but but still some remain and yes, on this each of this barrier which can be as as I said seems to be technical or small, it still needs a lot of work to remove it because all many of them we have some some, you know, reasons, administrative practices, various political sensitivities, sometimes also gold-plating or or institutional interest in member states. So this is just to mention you what needs to be done, a lot of granular, technical, you know, and sometimes painful work to discuss with member states and to try to remove.
But let's be honest also this this terrible ten, this this nice nice or or dramatic, you know, it's also it's also, you know, let's say we we succeeded something because definitely now during the year we have a lot of political attention and there clear commitment from member states, you have a council conclusions, European Council conclusions very strong on terrible ten calling all of us, member states especially to remove them, to look at them. Also, you know, one European one market roadmap which you also Parliament signed, so it's also very important, you know, instrument when it's mentioned. Let's also be clear, you have also a lot of big big things to do in with new legislation, but in addition and should be seen as an additional work, also it's important to try to remove these barriers also on the ground when it's it's in existing legislation. Now, let's be quickly our method, how we try to work with it. So basically and again work is started immediately after after, you know, adoption single market strategy, we had enormous a lot a lot of meetings with member states, meetings of course doesn't mean solutions, but but what to say what we had a lot of discussion, a lot of deep discussion, granular discussion and trying to remove.
Our method basically is to look a bit from barriers perspective, from business perspective, business who tries to work cross-border, who tries to sell goods and services cross-border and try to identify very concretely, very very granularly, let's say, the problems we have. And and there based on it we try to identify solutions, how to solve these problems. And solutions can be sometimes we need new European legislation when it's you need harmonization somehow, sometimes we need better enforcement, yeah, of of existing EU rules, but very often we also need kind of better practices in member states, administrative practices, because a lot of these barriers come from administrative practice of different interpretations of different, you know, sometimes pure bureaucracy, yeah, so this kind of small things we need we need to change. Now on the process, so we established again last autumn after quite intensive discussion member states, we can do my next slide, we established quite simple but very concrete process. Basically, we divided we divided this terrible ten, which is still terrible ten, it's still relatively big problems, big barriers, in 28 more concrete problems and basically we trying to address one by one now.
And and this is kind of single market enforcement task force SMET coordinating this process. In SMET we working with colleagues with member states responsible for, you know, single market member states, mainly ministries of economies, they coordinate. In SMET we agree, we try to agree on very very concretely on focused action on each of this problem, on each of this barrier, on actions and we we agree also on indicators how to measure a progress, yeah.
This is of course quite complex sometimes because of course, you know, we need to be objective and Member States, of course, nobody likes to be, you know, measured and to have red colors. Yes, so it's always a bit of discussion, but this is very granular work is going on. And then we agree on SMET, basically, yeah, this work is passed mainly to working groups, specific working groups, very sectoral working groups in Commission Member States where we really try to agree. So process is quite intensive. Now, if you look from results perspective last year, yeah, we basically started as I said last summer, but real work now, we're really in intensive work this year especially.
We already agreed on several things. Maybe next slide. We have clear progress, clear progress and clear agreement on actions in areas of services and several things in services. We also have clear actions and clear agreement on how to work on it in retail, digitalization, establishment. This was also priorities Member States agreed in Competitiveness Council.
So this we continue. Basically, as I said, in SMET we're working with representative of Member States of Single Market friends, I would say even Member States, Ministers of Economy. We're really doing very, very difficult sometimes, very important work in Member States trying to, you know, convince different authorities, different ministries to take Single Market aspects in their work and think about Single Market. So we have a lot of examples when, you know, just implementing European legislation or even beyond it, line ministries, they just say things, you know, which is maybe reasonable but without thinking about business from other Member States. So this is a bit of situation.
As I said, it's a lot of technical work still ahead of us. In autumn we'll have still many areas to cover. Again, it's a lot of technical work needs to be done, but also it's very important kind of political support because as I said, even some small technical barriers which seems to be technical, sometimes it's very difficult to move. And yes, we have as I said this SMET people, but also Competitiveness Councils follow very, very, very, very seriously the work, but also we created Cabinet of Mr. Séjourné created also group, network of Single Market Sherpas. It's more high-level people, mainly from Prime Minister's offices, which also started to work quite intensely on these areas and really trying to help discuss internally in Member States, you know, to agree on this Single Market aspects in different sectoral policies.
So this is my seven minutes. Thank you very much. If you have more concrete questions, of course I can go much deeper. Thank you.
Yeah, thank you so much for the presentation and also explaining a little bit how you organized your work and, yeah, of course I would be interested in having a little bit more probably concrete progress report, but let's see with the members. We start with Laura. Ah, yeah, Elisabeth.
Elisabeth Grossmann
Danke vielmals. Ja, danke für die Bemühungen der Kommission.
Mich würde interessieren, also eines der Terrible Ten sind die territorialen Lieferbeschränkungen, die gerade den Bürgerinnen und Bürgern kleiner und mittlerer Mitgliedstaaten große Probleme machen, weil Produkte von großen jetzt länderübergreifenden Konzernen oft um 20 bis 30 % teurer sind durch die konzerninternen Vertriebssysteme oder manche Produkte überhaupt nicht verfügbar sind. Und dadurch verlieren die Bürgerinnen und Bürger zunehmend das Vertrauen in den Binnenmarkt und die Europäische Union an sich. Also ich kann Ihnen sagen, insbesondere aus Österreich, aber auch Kroatien, Slowenien und viele andere Staaten, ja wir spüren es ja auch hier in Belgien. Die Menschen verstehen das einfach nicht mehr. Wir sind in einem gemeinsamen Markt und die Produkte sind in diesen Staaten wesentlich teurer oder eben nicht verfügbar.
Geoblocking, all diese Phänomene gehören hier auch dazu. Wie weit sind Sie hier mit Ihren Bemühungen vorangeschritten, auch solche Phänomene zukünftig nicht mehr auf unserem gemeinsamen europäischen Markt zuzulassen?
Kim Van Sparrentak
Thank you very much and thank you very much for this outset of the progress that is being made to make sure that our internal market functions better. I think one of the things and also that came up again when we were having the One Market Declaration and also recently when we had the negotiations on the E-declaration, it always seems that there's a lot of pressure put on the European side to make sure that we streamline and harmonize, but then when it comes to the discussions with Member States, the opposite reaction often happens. And I think a lot of the things that have been identified in the Terrible Tens are not even necessarily because of the way we have organized things as EU, but because Member States find it very difficult to streamline the implementation of a lot of directives and the way they deal with that. And I was wondering to what extent is there a broader plan by the European Commission to really make sure that when it comes to implementation, of course it's the prerogative of Member States, but that it would be way clearer to make sure that they really sit together, share best practices and already make a lot of alignments before they start complaining that the European single market doesn't work because it's different in every Member State. I'm just very curious to hear a bit more on the efforts on that side.
Thank you.
Christel Schaldemose
Thank you very much and I just wanted to support Kim in what she said, that we also need to look into the Member States' practices here. And we need to be very much aware that when we try to solve the problems with the Terrible Ten, are not creating new problems because we make new regulation and new rules that needs to be implemented. And therefore I also just wanted to support that and I'm interested in knowing more about what you do and what the conversation is with the Member States in order to make sure that they are doing their job also to reduce the problems we have. Thank you.
Anna Cavazzini
Thank you very much. Then I put myself on the agenda. I would be also interested in one of the specific Terrible Tens because I mean with some of the members we discussed a lot on territorial supply chain constraints, there's one action point in, probably you can say a little bit where we stand here.
And I would be also interested in the recognition of professional qualification. So you will basically also make a new legislative proposal to address the challenges or not? This would be my question. And probably more on a bigger philosophical question. I was just again in the US and of course in the USA they have also very, very fragmented laws.
Like a lot of the states do different laws. And I wonder a little bit how come there is never like the single market discussion in the US but we have it so much in the EU? Also you understand my question? Thanks. Yeah.
Alvydas Stančikas
Thank you very much. Thank you for the very, very, very important questions. I think I just maybe come back a bit of our method to, you know, the first thing that we say, you know, in this Terrible 10 exercise which we are doing basically and basically there we are pushing member states, we are trying them to push on, on changing their practices basically. This is about this basically. But we are doing this in really trying to focus on very concrete things, on very concrete problems.
Because the problem our experience is when we talk a bit more general with member states, when we talk more kind of, you know, let's say single market level horizontally, you know, everybody agrees how it's important single market. But when you ask very concrete questions, then there it became a bit of more problem because there you have sometimes interests of not even member states, let's be honest, sometimes of particular institutions in member states and they sometimes very, very, very logical interests because they want to ensure their policies. But this policy sometimes methods how they ensure them can, you know, restrict single market or, or cross-border trade. So this is our this Terrible 10 exercise, majority of this is exactly about member states, you know, practices, yeah. So again, coming back on territorial supply constraints.
Yes, we have in Terrible 10, 10 territorial supply constraints. And this was exactly, we dealt with this already in before even Terrible 10 in Single Market Enforcement Task Force which already was doing this type of job, you know, for years, let's be almost four years. And we discuss very intensive this. And this we put, you know, very, very concrete questions to member states saying, okay, please talk your business, do you have these problems inside? They discuss and it was quite deep discussion on this.
And we also put on, you know, we thought maybe we have, we can do something with member states' practices in this area. Maybe member states can implement some practices to avoid this type of problems. But agreement was basically it's difficult at this stage. So why we have in Single Market Strategy now very clear, you know, commitment that Commission with member states will work on new more horizontal, you know, European, European proposal on this, European level. So on this Terrible 10, 10, agreement was after quite deep discussion, you know, that we need European level, huh, because we cannot solve this problem in at member states' level.
So this is I think if I remember correctly and now proposal should come at the beginning of next year. So this is dealt now with sectoral working group and and it's quite intensive reflection and discussion on this area. I think if I remember correctly they launched also also already consultations. So this is going on. So this is one of Terrible 10 when we agreed we need European level action.
If you take your example of regulated professions which we, which we will tackle this in autumn more concretely. But basically we identified more two concrete problems, let's say at this stage. One problem is delays, complexity is too high, yeah. So, so this is again we will, we, we have some metrics also how to measure, you know, Court of Auditors did already some kind of, you know, assessment how much time. We put, we discuss this with member states.
Member states contest this kind of metrics. They say it's not reflect reality. So we still need to work on it and to agree, to agree, you know, exactly how we measure. How we measure and how we remove at least delays in, in, you know, because it seems that it's a problem of delays how much time it takes to, to have your profession recognized, yeah.
And so this is just to explain a bit of method. This we will discuss in autumn together with, of course, our colleagues from DG Employment, which are also proposing, you know, new legislation which will come also in autumn. So they also probably this new legislation also solves part of this problems, yeah? But again, I think it's very important to this table ten exercise in addition. So everything should go together as you mentioned, new legislation, in new legislation very important what you're doing in IMCO to look this single market perspective, to think always how it will affect business cross-border.
It sounds simple, it's probably not so simple as you know, but this is very important. I understand you discuss EU declarations, it's also very important area, yeah? So how it's really affect de facto on the ground business cross-border, yeah? And maybe also linked with regulated profession I mentioned at the beginning in services area a bit. We also agreed with member states and now working, happen, we did very relatively simple exercise.
We looked in, in construction sector and we just identify professions or services which regulated only in five member states or less. So pure kind of almost technical work and we just asked member states, look at them, because 22 member states they are not regulating this. Do you really need to regulate it? We're not imposing, we're not changing, but this is about practice and some member states really accepted and this difference very big between member states. Some member states regulate 15 professions, some member states one.
And we asked them to look without imposing, without asking them because it's legal, let's say, it's not infringement, but try to look from this single market perspective because it's a barrier, yeah? So can you look at it, do you really need or you can ensure this control or ensure safety on all this kind of things with different manners because other member states. So just to illustrate you a bit of work, so again as just sorry to say but it's a lot of granular small work which needs to be done and this is about this basically. But as you said, yes, the practice in member states we see clearly a lot, a lot happening on this level, yeah? And again very often without kind of not bad will, intention to really create a barrier, but just, you know, sectoral ministries, sectoral agencies, they just want to implement their policies, they do controls, they do different things and this de facto creates, creates the barrier for, for business, yeah.
I hope I more or less answered.
Anna Cavazzini
I don't know if the question was still on geoblocking, right, and on the US?
Alvydas Stančikas
Yeah, US, sorry, yeah, US, yeah, I don't know if it was a few years ago I saw also study about it, I think one scientific they compare, compare US and European single market. And I was, it was American, I don't remember exactly the name of the who did this study and it was quite interesting, you know, interesting of course it's a study which can always be discussed. But what he concluded I remember it was that de facto, de facto European single market is even better than American. They have also quite a lot of barriers, they have also, but the what I remember it was very interesting to me that because it's a different behavior of business of America, they just accept it. They not used to complain, they just accept and deal with this.
But European, it was a conclusion I can find even the study probably, you know, conclusion was that European, European we, we aware about and we complain and we want to push single market, which I think is very positive, huh, because we talk about it and business also talk about it and politicians, you talk about it. So I think this is a big difference, America somehow they accepted but his conclusion was that in de facto we're not so bad in single market, yeah. And it's true we did a lot of, a lot of things during many years, huh, from Delors basically. So but still few things remains.
Thank you so much. Any other quick follow-up question? If that's not the case, then this concludes agenda item 24. Thanks so much. I think it's very interesting, I mean we'll follow up on the individual files anyhow and probably can have another assessment in a couple of months of where we stand, but a lot of success on this.
Anna Cavazzini
And with that we come to our last agenda item of today, the presentation of the technological sovereignty package. You have all seen that the Commission presented the package a couple of weeks ago and of course as IMCO committee we are also very interested anyhow because we are the digital committee and work on all the digital files. But also we are working on the Industrial Accelerator Act and also here there is of course the idea of having more like made in Europe and strengthening European industry. So the tech sovereignty package is in my mind a little bit the twin or like the sister of the IAA but in digital. And we are happy that we have the Commission here to present the package and then afterwards you can ask questions and put remarks forward as usual.
So I welcome Kilian Gross, Director for Emerging and Enabling Technologies at DG CONNECT.
Kilian Gross
Thanks a lot. It's a real pleasure to be with you today and to present you this important package which we have adopted on the 3rd of June and which will now of course be deliberated in Parliament and in Council. I, it's a big package but I will try to take you a little bit through the highlights so that you have a first impression what this is all about. If we move to the next slide, you see the components of this package and a little bit perhaps the background. So the package is, the starting point of the package is that we need to really step up a gear in Europe in order to keep pace in this technological race and the competition about the very advanced technologies with the US and China and as well not only to keep competitive but as well to keep sovereign, so to ensure our resilience.
This is not about cutting off our markets or protecting our markets but this is strengthening our markets and ensuring that we are able to absorb for instance shocks in the supply chain or interruptions. What we have prepared here and what you see here on the slide are four main elements. One is we have a Chips Act 2.0 which is a comprehensive revision of the Chips Act which we had already in 2022 and 23 and which we consider to be successful but we bring it to, we try to bring it to a completely new level because we see that in particular the explosion of AI chips and the explosion of demand in the chip market and digitalization requires really to bring this to a different scale and therefore we have introduced a number of innovative tools which should allow for this upscale if you wish. We have complemented this with the Cloud and AI Development Act. This Cloud and AI Development Act you will see this later follows a little bit the structure of the Chips Act, it has as well the three pillars and here the idea is that we will boost innovation and research of course in cloud, that we will strengthen the capacity, we want really to triple the cloud capacity in Europe and we want to have as well the security element here, for instance we want to ensure that we have sovereign clouds for sensitive public services.
Both go together, that's why we presented them as a package because one of the key problems of Chips Act 1 or the criticisms was that the Chips Act 1 basically focused on the supply side and not so much on the demand side. And CADA, that you will see by tripling the requests for data warehouses in Europe will exactly do that, it will create a domestic demand.
The third element is the open source strategy which you find in particular in the chapeau communication where we underline the particular importance of open source and the tools we want to apply to support that because we believe that open source is a very good tool, can be a very powerful tool to allow the community to engage, to allow independent checks of digital systems and allow us as well to catch up in the technology race. Last but not least, very important, we have accompanied this with a strategic roadmap for digitalization and AI in the energy sector because we are aware, and this is a big concern, that the data centers which we try to support here will of course consume a lot of energy. So we have to think this from the beginning together with the extension of the energy supply in order to create a sustainable and lasting ecosystem. If we go to the next slide, we can zoom a bit deeper into the package. Here, next slide, we go into the Chips Act.
If you go on, you see that we have in the Chips Act three, we have kept the structure of the three pillars which we had so far and you will see the same structure in the Cloud and AI Development Act. The reason is that we wanted in Chips Act 1 and we want to continue to do this to have a comprehensive approach. We do not just want to look at one aspect. So this is, the idea is here to give a comprehensive legal setup for a technology to boost this and to allow this to develop and flourish. So we look at R&D&I, we look at security of supply, so capacity building, and we look at monitoring of the supply chains.
And on R&D&I, we will of course continue what we have done, the pilot lines, we want to further industrialize them, we want to develop them further or even build new ones and so on. But we have as well tried to integrate new elements into this program, namely we want to add challenges, grand challenges, which is a bit inspired by the American way of DARPA, so that we want to basically give our companies, our startups tasks where we think they should develop. For instance, we had one recently, an AI chip, and then those when they have a prototype, we will provide a procurement, so we will then basically push them to develop devices which can then be used later on on the market. So it should be very close to the market, very close to the commercialization. The second element, we want to support innovation procurement.
We think that is quite important because the public sector is an important sector of demand and this could really help us to stimulate the demand. And like this, we think that we can as well with other elements of course on the demand side, we can really help then the sector. On the capacity building side, the security of supply, we want to continue to attract investors into Europe in building the semiconductor manufacturing capacity because the investment needs which we see are really very significant. And therefore we think of obviously this cannot only be done by the public side, there must be private investments as well and these private investments should be triggered. We had under Chips Act 1, 52 billion already committed, but there may be much more needed.
So we have extended under the pillar 2 or we have clarified to be more precise, we have clarified the definition of first-of-a-kind which covers now the whole value chain from raw materials, design up to packaging if there is no significant production of facility in Europe. So that should clarify this and allow there even further use of this instrument as well then public support. We have introduced this new element of strategic projects where we will basically allow that we on European level identify what are the weak points, what are the choke points where we have to add elements and where we then want to go for big investments. We will have on the monitoring side, we want to coordinate with member states. We have in particular here created a business, a platform where we want to create a digital twin which should allow us to better understand here the market.
Here you see a little overview, I'm very happy then to go into more detail. You see on the supply side, and this is mirroring, we have the first of a kind, the fast-track permitting which we have extended, so one year now and one-stop shop, strategic projects I mentioned, and the lab-to-the-fab industrial accelerator. We have a number of demand-side measures now mirroring this, in particular demand forum and accelerators where we want to work with industry groups in order to identify their needs and to ensure that this chip production is really tailored to the demand side. The grand challenges I mentioned already and, very important, we have this preferential access in public procurement where we have now this idea of domestic or equivalent undertaking so to ensure that there are European players as well wherever this is needed because we have for instance chips in areas of NIS2. We have on the resilience side the B2B platform and the information requests which can now even be launched before the formal launch of a crisis, and we will improve the framework for RD&I.
Next slide please, because I see I get too passionate and then I run out of time.
Here the only thing I did not mention, of course we want to improve skills, very important, and we want to introduce a region of excellence, a label of excellence for regions. If we now turn to the CADER, you see here on the slide that we have the same structure, so we go basically in three pillars. We will as well boost research and innovation and here we will as well use the grand challenges. Next slide please. We have on the capacity side the ambition, if we go on, next slide, sorry.
On the capacity we want to introduce data center acceleration zones, we want to permit, we want to predict better the permitting and facilitate the development of sustainable data centers across Europe. We really want as well to boost, and that's an element of innovation of course, that these data centers use and consume as little energy as possible because the underlying rationale is that we think that we need to triple the capacity in data centers in order to stay competitive for a world where AI will be omnipresent. And then of course we want to improve our autonomy, so we want to have here, this is the element on procurement, where we want in procurement as well to basically reward in the procurement elements the added European value. That will be an element which should be taken into account in the procurement, and in sensitive areas the procurement should look into, there will be certain sovereignty elements, and that we see then more on the next slide, and the last slide, because that I think is probably one of the most politically sensitive provisions in this new package, in this CADER package. Because here we have, besides the element to be clear, we have this element on procurement where we ask, we add an element that the public side should look into European added value.
On top of this we have this here, that in areas which are covered by NIS2 or which are dealing with security or with justice or with defense, so sensitive areas, there should be a self-assessment of the level of risk where these data are used and the data centers are then used. This should be done basically by the national authorities, but the Commission will issue guidelines and an implementing act in order to ensure that there is a uniform system of criteria. Based on this, the public authorities can only use data centers which have, which are classified according to different levels. The classification takes place on the first level, the lowest level, in a self-assessment which shall be communicated to the national competent authority, whereas level two, three and four will be exercised by an independent auditing and then will be confirmed by the national competent authorities. Here you see that the level of sovereignty and of security is increasing, so you have already in the level two, you have advanced measures to avoid third-country access to the data and interruption of the service.
In level three, you have providers must be owned and controlled and controlled, that's very important, from the EU. The Commission can recognize third party third country providers. And in level four, you have the full stack, everything must come from Europe. So this is a means as well to ensure our sovereignty, and here you see a bit the interplay of this new package, because it should as well stimulate demand, because it will help us to stimulate the the demand for European chips, because they are produced in a trustworthy manner. We have, that's perhaps interesting to to close up, we cannot now in this package tap of course into the next MFF, even if we have we develop I think here very concrete ideas what we would like to do if the next MFF would provide for this.
We see a quite huge need for investment, so we all together we think this is about we speak about investments of 450 billion until 2036, so this is very big. We have, and that's perhaps for your attention as well, in the communication, the chapeau communication, as well launched this request or this consultation, if you wish, for a sovereignty tech fund. Because we think we cannot really wait until the next MFF, we should already now start to take action because we see what's happening in the rest of the world, and we should reflect what we can do there. We have not proposed this yet because we wanted to collect the the views of the EIB, of the Parliament, of the member states, but this is something which is very important for us to think about a sovereignty sovereignty fund in order to address these investments. I stop perhaps here not to be too long.
Thank you.
Thank you very much for the presentation and also, yeah, the explanation and also we see again that procurement is one of the main pillars, so that's why also we as IMCO committee expect that we will be one of the leading files of on this on of the leading committees on that file. So I have already some members who asked for the floor. We start with Christel Schaldemose.
Christel Schaldemose
Oh, thank you very much. First and foremost, thank you very much for the presentation. There is no doubt that it's a good idea that we do more in this area. So just to not be misunderstood, I I am very supportive of the fact that we're doing more. But but I when I look at it, I I can't help thinking that we already now needs to have a Chips Act 2.0.
So already in two years do we then need a Chips Act 3.0, 4.0? I mean, it's very very fast after the first one. So my question is, can we be sure that you know what you're doing now so that we don't have to adjust again in in a short period of time, or said with in another way, is it is it really needed that the European Commission is doing a lot of things in this area? Shouldn't we leave it to the market and do more for for the funding instead? So that was more a general question.
Then some a couple of concrete questions. I do think that the EUCS, the assurance level, is extremely important. We need really to be aware of safety and make sure that important data stays in Europe, and I really like that level. I think it's good. And then I wondered, what what do you have any concrete targets for the European AI compute capacity?
Let's say this is adopted very soon, hopefully, and then we start delivering. What are the targets? What do we expect? I mean, we have the Danish Gefion supercomputer, which is very good, but I'm told by experts that already in the end of this year, it is occupied completely and we need more capacity. So do you have any targets for this?
I think that could be interesting. But thank you very much, and and it was not to be too critical, I'm just curious about, I mean, is it really the Commission who is the best one to to know how we can develop this market? Thank you.
Alexandra.
That was quick.
Alexandra Geese
Okay, because you said you already had seven members, so I was, I thought. Thank you very much, Chair, and thank you very much to the Commission for the presentation. I think we all agree on the objective that we need a lot more sovereignty in the technological area in Europe. But I have some doubts that the CARDA as proposed by the Commission achieves that goal. And therefore I have a few questions.
And the first one is, you say, the Commission says they want to triple the data center capacity, but I find it very unclear on what evidence. Because if we just look at the US and China, I don't think we want to replicate that model. And I haven't seen the Commission coming up really with what the European model could be. I mean, how do we focus on smaller models, on high-quality data and sector-specific data? On what kind of data capacity, do data center capacity do we need?
Then I have doubts on the way the assurance levels are built, because the only really European sovereign level would be level four, but where the impact assessment says only 1% of the data would go there and basically only defense data. So what happens to personal data of citizens held by public authorities? What happens to health data and a number of other data categories that are extremely sensitive? Also, the 1% will not create an incentive for European data center companies and their potential investors. It's just a number that is too small.
On level three, in theory, there is European control, but you're already saying this is where the Commission could allow third countries to come in, companies headquartered in third countries. And you know, when you discuss this, everybody says, well, we want to close, we don't want to have Canada out, we don't want to have the UK out. And I understand that, but everybody knows that the data center market is controlled by three US companies. There will be massive lobbying by the companies, by the US administration. And then the whole structure of the CARDA doesn't make sense anymore, basically, you know, if three US, these three dominant US companies fall under, get exceptions under assurance level three, I don't know how that's going to work.
Then the rest of the CARDA is basically built to give data center companies sort of a priority lane when dealing with European local administration in terms of permitting. Doesn't that mean when that market is 70 to 80% controlled by these three hyperscalers, that they get more administrative resources to help them, they get quicker permitting at the expense of whom? At the expense of European companies, at the expense of companies who still have to raise that capital, at the expense of actually industrial companies that create actual jobs. And we know that data centers are usually built in areas with structural issues with an economy that's not working too well. So, and they don't create jobs.
So job creation will be further hampered because we give precedence to very large foreign companies in terms of permitting. And then the question is, what about energy? We know that there were more, we're waiting for more proposals from the Commission in terms of sustainability of data centers. When can we expect the rating scheme and how do you think, you know, the energy will be provided for the data center build-up? Thank you.
Thank you very much, Laila.
Leila Chaibi
Oui, merci, merci pour la pour cette présentation. Je crois que c'est un dossier qui arrive à point nommé étant donné la décision dernièrement de Donald Trump de bloquer l'accès aux derniers modèles frontières d'Anthropic. Cela nous prouve, nous indique la voie à suivre et la voie à suivre c'est de cesser d'être une colonie numérique des États-Unis et il faut que l'Europe s'émancipe de nos dépendances numériques.
Et cela passe notamment par développer et maîtriser l'ensemble de la chaîne de valeur de l'intelligence artificielle et donc de disposer de nos propres infrastructures numériques en matière de centres de données, de data centers, d'avoir un cloud, des data centers souverains. Malheureusement, il y a le risque dans le texte qui a été proposé, qui a été présenté là à l'instant et puis le 2 juin dernier par la Commission, de souveraineté washing. Et moi je m'inscris dans la continuité de ce que vient de dire ma collègue Alexandra. Quand je, quand on regarde les niveaux, les niveaux exigés pour les niveaux d'exigence exigés présentés dans le CADA, en fait il n'y a que 1 % des usages qui seront effectivement fermés à Microsoft, Google, Amazon et réservés à des acteurs européens. Alors même qu'effectivement les marchés publics c'est un vecteur clé pour développer notre filière numérique et vous le dites vous-même dans votre étude d'impact.
Mais le problème c'est qu'avec la classification selon quatre niveaux, il y a uniquement le niveau 4 qui serait vraiment concerné. Concernant le niveau 3, donc il y a la question des coentreprises. Les coentreprises sont autorisées. Coentreprise, c'est notamment les entreprises dont une partie est états-unienne. Et là, en juin 2025 au Sénat français, il y avait auditionné le directeur des affaires juridiques de Bleu, qui est une coentreprise fondée par Microsoft, Orange et Capgemini.
Et sous serment, il a déclaré qu'il ne pouvait pas garantir que les données des citoyens français qui étaient confiées à Microsoft via Bleu ne seraient jamais transmises à Washington à la suite d'une injonction du gouvernement américain. Du fait de l'extraterritorialité du gouvernement américain, du droit américain, et bien on ne peut pas garantir qu'ils disent non quand on leur demande de donner nos données. Est-ce que c'est ça votre définition de la souveraineté ? Et pourquoi, une question, pourquoi ne pas avoir dès le niveau 1 exigé une condition simple, que les données publiques stockées ne puissent pas techniquement et juridiquement être soumises à l'extraterritorialité du droit d'un pays tiers ? Merci.
Kim Van Sparrentak
Thank you very much for the presentation. Also very curious to all the answers to all the questions that have already been asked. I would on top of that like to just focus on one more thing. So in this proposal, the Commission is saying that we need three times as much cloud capacity. And I'm still very curious on what basis exactly.
Because of course we have the model of the United States, which is a few tech billionaires spending ridiculous amounts of money into developing AI, building data centers without any regard for the environment, for whether that is actually good for the people around them, for water, for energy. And on top of that they are building models based on incredible amounts of stolen data. I am wondering if that is the basis on which the European Commission has decided this number. And then I'm very curious if the European Commission can explain what they consider European about that approach of developing cloud and AI. Thank you.
Thank you so much. Any other member wants to come in? Otherwise, yeah, please, Ms. Deling.
Elisabeth Dieringer
Vielen Dank. Ich hätte auch zwei Fragen. Und zwar die erste betrifft die Finanzierung. Und es wird ja in diesem Paket von Beträgen um 120 Milliarden Euro für Halbleiter und 20 Milliarden Euro für KI-Gigafabriken und Rechenzentren geredet, aber bisher ist doch keines dieser Mittel gesichert.
Also sie hängen am Wettbewerbsfähigkeitsfonds, über den noch keine Einigkeit besteht und auf den auch Verteidigung und Energiewende zurückgreifen. Der erste Chips Act setzte das Ziel eines Weltmarktanteils von 20 % bis 2030. Der Europäische Rechnungshof kam zu dem Schluss, dass dieses Ziel unrealistisch war, dass die Kommission nur etwa 5 % der Mittel selbst verwaltet und dass Europas Anteil an der weltweiten Halbleiterproduktion heute bei rund 10 % liegt und bis 2030 voraussichtlich auf etwa 12 % steigen wird. Deutlich also unter dem Ziel. Daher die Frage, was hat sich diesmal konkret an der Konzeption geändert und falls die Haushaltsverhandlungen weniger erbringen als diese Pläne erfordern, welche Zusagen werden dann zuerst zurückgenommen?
Und die zweite Frage geht in eine andere Richtung. Also das geht's eher um diese Beschaffungsregeln und Souveränitätsbewertungen. Europäische Unternehmen, die in den Vereinigten Staaten abwandern, tun dies jedoch in der Regel vor allem deswegen, weil Kapital und die Bedingungen zum Wachsen dort leichter zu finden sind. Also es ist eine Frage der Spar- und Investitionsunion, die dieses Paket kaum berührt. Zugleich nutzen öffentliche Stellen und Bürger die etablierten amerikanischen Dienste, weil diese eingebunden, bezahlbar und vertraut sind.
Erstens daher die Frage, ob die man nicht vielleicht Gefahr läuft, einen im Kern finanzielles Problem als ein Beschaffungsproblem zu behandeln. Und zweitens, welche Zusicherung Sie geben können, dass die Souveränität in der Praxis nicht schlicht bedeutet, öffentliche Einrichtungen und Bürger zu teureren und weniger praktischen Werkzeugen zu verpflichten. Danke.
Anna Cavazzini
I will add a question at the end, but very similarly to some of the colleagues, I wonder why did you not just also for sake of clarity and less EU laws, because everyone talks about simplification, put the digital aspects in the IAA? Because I know that was discussed at the beginning and also the IAA has very, very clear thresholds that I don't see in the Cloud and AI Development Act, where it is a little bit more complicated and so on. So in the IAA we say clear thresholds for Made in Europe, and the same could have been done for the digital. And I wonder why you did a separate law, why you didn't include it in the IAA and why you diluted the threshold so much like a lot of the colleagues have already asked. So with that I give you back the floor to answer, Mr. Cross, and yeah, looking forward.
Kilian Gross
Thanks a lot for all these very interesting and pertinent questions. We are very much looking forward to the discussion with the European Parliament on these very important proposals. I will try to do my best to elaborate on your remarks. The first remark from Ms. Schaldemose, do we know what we're doing and do we have these projections on the market? It is clear we have in CARDARA a clause where we clearly say we will monitor demand and supply.
We build this cloud infrastructure for everybody, for private actors, for public actors, for SMEs, for our public authorities and for our defense. So it's a comprehensive approach. When we say we think we want to triple and we will probably end up somewhere in 2036 with 60 gigawatt, then these are the estimates. But we will of course as we go along, we will see what happens and we will adjust according to the needs. We do not have here a five-year plan where we say we will whatever comes build these kind of infrastructure.
But what we want to do in essence, as because we create here conditions in particular that private investors will do that and we want to stimulate this with public with some public intervention and public support, is that we meet the demand. Because what we estimate is that the demand will be very, very high.
But you're fully right, we will of course have to verify this constantly because we do not want to build data centers which in the end are not used. So we will of course do this with the market, but as this is mainly privately driven, we are very convinced that the private actors will will look very carefully into this. And if you look into other parts of this world, and that's a bit what we should do as well, but when you see what happens in the US, the biggest driver for growth in the US in the last year was the construction of data centers. And by the way, this is as well something which makes us think because in the US this is really a growth engine because they buy the chips from Nvidia and from AMD, from American providers. Therefore it stimulates the overall American economy, whereas we in very advanced data centers have mainly are relying on third country chips.
So that is an issue and if you see the growth in these markets, you you see what what they expect. So that was as well the question here on CARDA, why to triple the capacity, what kind of data does it rely on? We have the data you see in the impact assessment what we have done as a data analysis, but we are aware that markets can change and we will monitor this very closely. Then there were a few questions on the sovereignty level and the criticism that only level four is for non is exclusively for Europeans and level one to three would be for potentially for everybody and therefore it would not really lead to a sovereign cloud solution. I think we are of course happy to discuss this with you, but in our understanding as well levels two and in particular level three are quite restrictive.
You have to do a lot of things in order to satisfy the requirements from level three. It is not just a declaration and if you read out what Mr. Leahy did, the declaration from from Microsoft that they cannot ensure the protection of data, already in level one you have to ensure that the data stay in Europe. So you need to ensure the provider will need to ensure that this data sovereignty is respected. On level three we expect respect for the Data Act, respect for GDPR, we respect for our all legislation, data protection adequacy and of course we expect reciprocity. So we allow we will only do that if we in these third countries our companies have the same access to public procurement as they have here.
If you now ask me whether US companies can meet these requirements, I think it would be challenging. We have to see this one by one, but I think it's jumping a bit too fast to say up to level three there is no problem, up to level three practically everybody can do it. In our understanding already levels two and three produce very dedicated and sophisticated requirements which are important and relevant. And we think in a in this logic which we have in a number of acts on this risk-based approach this makes some sense because we should as well distinguish what we need. This is not about protecting, this is about what we need in order to protect our public authorities in their work.
So we should have a nuanced system that we that we basically ask for the the measures which provide the safeguards required for a certain level of of protection. There was this remark, I think from Ms. Gese, about do we not just support then the hyperscalers in the fast permitting and basically put pressure on our public authorities to go fast? We will not achieve the data center extension without foreign investment. That's as well something we need to to realize, we have to be a bit realistic what how the market is presenting itself. But we will in particular of course in the permitting we look and we want of course to stimulate of course European as far as we can European investments.
And in the permitting we have a particular provision saying that there should be a particular focus should be on SMEs and startups. So we will as well here the same is mirrors a bit the approach on the risks in the sovereignty, we will the level of support you get will as well depend a bit on the level of need. So an Amazon will get less support than an European SME if they ask for the fast permitting.
So this is as well something perhaps to take into account. On energy, you're fully right. We need to think this together. We need to develop the energy structure in parallel with this. But one thing as well is very clear.
We put in CARDA the focus on energy efficiency and on data warehouses which are energy efficient, which have a low consumption of water, which is another big concern, and a low consumption of energy. So we think that can provide, and we will look together, that can provide some advantages. And obviously, a modern digitalization can as well bring some benefit to energy consumption. For instance, complex energy grids can only be steered with AI and with data centers which really then optimize the grids. But this to be said, this is of course, and that's why we have this in the package.
We understand that this is an important concern and we have to think this together. We cannot just build data centers without following up on the energy. On sovereignty washing, I tried to explain. If a company would say they can't prevent data leaks, they would have a problem to reach any higher level of the scheme which we have presented. Ms. Born-Dack asked what is really European.
We tried in the Chips Act, we have identified what we think is a domestic undertaking or an equivalent. And here in CARDA, we have identified in the procurement article, for innovative procurement, we have identified elements which have to be taken into account, which provide European added value. This is all of course in our view very important because you need always to make a comprehensive assessment. Certain things are simply not present on the European market, so it doesn't make sense to say you have to buy European. But what we ask for, and that I think is in our view the right approach, that you have to reflect when you do a procurement what you can do in Europe and how you can stimulate with your procurement the European ecosystem.
So this is a bit more nuanced, but we think it's a bit more adapted to the reality and hopefully it will then pay off. Then there was a remark, Chips Act 2, is this just because Chips Act 1 was a failure and therefore we need then Chips Act 3, 4, 5, and we will see what happens. We believe that Chips Act 1 was not a failure and you can see that because we basically maintain the core structure. We did not, if we were convinced that Chips Act 1 did not deliver, we would have basically, to put it bluntly, thrown it in the bin and start from scratch and develop something completely new. You are right when you say we didn't meet the 20% target.
We are at 10.5% of production and we wanted to be in a few years' time in 2030 by 20%. But if you look at the absolute figures, you see that the market has exploded. We have considerably in absolute terms extended the capacity in Europe on the chips production. We have 52 billion of investments and 80 billion of committed investments. So we have converted the trend.
If you look in the 90s, Europe was a powerhouse of semiconductor production and since then it was a steady year-by-year decline in our share. With Chips Act 1, we have turned the trend. We maintain our share, we have slightly increased it. But what we see is that there is this market is exploding. And you see the chips manufacturers, what they build, TSMC, what they build in the US, what they build in Taiwan.
So the chips production, the overall production has grown much faster than we expected it at the time. Therefore the target is indeed, and the European Court of Auditors has confirmed that, is not realistic. We will fine-tune these targets. We work on this. We think we need performance indicators.
We cannot just go on and adopt a Chips Act after Chips Act. We need to be measured against what we are doing. That's completely correct. We will fine-tune these indicators. We have already indicators in Chips Act 2 in the annexes, but we will as well look at the targets to make them better and more appropriate.
We have, so then there is a question of the budget. This is of course a general issue you will face now in a number of scenarios. We will come later this year with the Quantum Act. We have now the Chips Act, we have the CARDA. But the current MFF is coming to an end and the current MFF is largely exhausted.
We nevertheless believe that the world is such that we cannot allow us to wait until the next MFF is adopted and then slowly start to think about what we want to do. We think it's now time to think what we want to do. And of course, this is not a financial commitment because we are dependent on the MFF, we are dependent on the 27 in the end to agree for a financial envelope. But we think that it's the right approach to show our level of ambition. And here we count really on the European Parliament to show that what we can do in Europe if you give us the means, that we have a clear idea, a clear vision supported by you and by the Member States what we want to do if the budget provides us for.
If then the budget doesn't come, if the ECF is completely cut, yes, we will do much less and we will not achieve the target. That's why when you look at the Chips Act 2 and you look in the CARDA in the impact assessment, what you see is not the, we couldn't underpin it with the budget because we don't have it now. But what we did is we showed what we could do, what we see as a gap and what we could do if certain financial means would be provided. Because I think like this, we can really allow everybody in this process to take an informed and responsible decision what we should do on European level and what we should not do. Because then it's really clear what we could do.
I stop now. I see I'm over time. You asked, Ms. Chair, you asked the IAA question. We didn't put the industrial, the digital part in the IAA because we think it's a bit different. And therefore we think it should be more adapted.
And you see this here on this European approach. In the IAA, we have this European value element, for instance. And we don't think that this is particularly appropriate for chips because chips, it would be extremely complicated because they are very complex, they pass 70 times the borders until they're final to identify what has been done by which company. You would end up in a basically in a very heavy bureaucracy because you would have to basically monitor and document every production step and you would have to identify who, which is the company, is it a European company, is it controlled by a European owner and so on. So we felt this would lead to quite some complexity.
And we think that here our approach to look at the domestic or equivalent undertaking, for instance, is a more pragmatic one which nevertheless should achieve the same objective. Because we wanted to drive the balance between achieving the objective and not creating a heavy administrative burden. Sorry for being too long.
Anna Cavazzini
Thank you very much. No, there was also a lot of questions and of course thank you so much that you tried to answer all of them. Anyhow, that was not the last exchange, only the first one. Yeah, all of us have our opinions on the file and will of course also bring this in in the process. But I think it was probably also good for you to hear some feedback from from the members on your proposal.
So thanks so much. That concludes agenda item 25. And if there's not any other business, also our meeting for today. And the next one is, as you know, on the 13th and 14th of July. Have a very good day and of course don't die in the heat and be careful, drink too much, drink a lot and have a good afternoon.