By Martin Banks - 17th September 2009
Drivers working for small firms who are making journeys of less than 150 kilometres should be exempt from the proposed rule
Edmund Stoiber
The EU has been urged to take further measures to reduce the often "crippling" costs of red tape on Europe's SMEs.
The call was made by leading German politician Edmund Stoiber, who chairs a high-level group which advises the commission on the reduction of such costs.
Speaking in Brussels, Stoiber said he also wants the EU to "raise awareness" of the impact of administrative burdens on small firms which employ 10 or fewer people.
Scant attention is paid to the consequences of implementing such EU legislation at member state level, he said.
He added that SMEs make up the vast bulk of Europe's businesses and, as such, are most adversely affected by EU-imposed red tape.
Stoiber, the former minister-president of Bavaria and ex-chairman of Germany's conservative CSU party, says one possible measure relates to the planned introduction of obligatory installation of expensive tachometers for lorry drivers.
He said, "Drivers working for small firms who are making journeys of less than 150 kilometres should be exempt from the proposed rule."
According to estimates, the European economy is annually adversely hit by EU administrative burdens in several ways, including the storage obligation for documents as well as providing EU-specific accounts, balances, statistics, registers.
Reducing administrative burdens and better regulation therefore have been put at the top of the European policy priority list, in particular the reduction of the administrative costs for SMEs.
The EU wants to cut the cost of red tape on businesses resulting from EU legislation by 25 per cent by 2012 Stoiber's group has identified measures which, it says, could save up to €41bn.
Stoiber outlined the measures he thinks the commission,member states and parliament need to take in order to achieve such projected savings.
The high-level group he leads is composed of 15 members representing a wide segment of society, namely small and large business organisations, trade unions, NGOs and worlds of academia and politics.
The group was given a three-year mandate but newly-elected commission president José Manuel Barroso and Günter Verheugen, the commissioner responsible for enterprise and industry, recently announced that this will be extended until August 2010.
Stoiber was addressing a packed audience at the Representation of the Free State of Bavaria to the EU in an event organised by Hanns-Seidel-Stiftung, the leading Brussels-based think-tank.
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