madam president on behalf of my political group and also as the chairman of the committee on the internal market and consumer protection i want to thank mrs weiler in particular as the rapporteur and also all the many colleagues from the committee who are here today for a great example of teamwork
i include in that both the council and the commission
there is a lot of talk about smart regulation at the moment but i think this is a classic example of smart regulation
for a start it goes to the heart of problems that many small businesses are experiencing in an economy in which they are finding conditions very difficult at the moment
we must insist that member states implement this proposal as soon as possible
secondly the commission rightly analysed the problems and successes of the previous directive and i want to remark here that this was the first directive where the agreement of the committee coordinators to invite the commission to present its full impact assessment of any proposal was carried out to the full
we had a very comprehensive impact assessment which clearly identified the areas which needed to be changed
above all the insistence now that public authorities in particular also have to conform to the standards applied to the private sector and cannot abuse their position against small suppliers by complying with these requirements is absolutely central
this is the major achievement and i particularly want to thank the belgian presidency and i see that they are represented here this evening because they resisted demands from some member states to try and get themselves a carve-out from this sixty day requirement
we said to the belgian presidency that there is no point whatsoever in having this directive if you allow this to happen
it is devoid of meaning if you let public authorities off the hook
i think this is a good example of smart regulation but may i just conclude by making two final observations
first of all we must get this implemented properly and consistently in every member state and secondly it must result in a change of culture which says that it is simply no longer acceptable for large customers to exploit small businesses by paying them late
i think this is what this directive will achieve
