madam president constituents of mine in business will look at a report like this with weary resignation
here are all the trite clichéd phrases that we associate with eu directives e-commerce is a vital force of the internet an important catalyst for achieving the aims of the eu twenty twenty strategy it is important for all stakeholders to cooperate
this does nothing to facilitate actual commerce and free exchange
you do not need directives and regulations to allow businesses to buy and sell to each other it is what they do without having to be expressly legalised
when one of my constituents is selling by internet to a company on the other side of the world in australia or new zealand they manage to do it without the regulatory superstructure of the eu's single market
in fact they often do it with far fewer problems than when trying to negotiate their way through the tangle of european rules which perhaps explains why in the years of our membership of the european union our trade has been in surplus with every continent in the world except europe
it perhaps explains now why with the rise of the technological revolution my constituents are rediscovering their global vocation
