mr president this is an important debate tonight with the committee on the internal market and consumer protection to demonstrate that the services directive into which we put so much effort in the last parliament under evelyne gebhardt's leadership with many colleagues including myself being involved is absolutely indispensable to the creation of future growth and jobs in the european economy
i say to mr canfin and others that there has been a huge amount of investment in time and resources and indeed in systems like the points of single contact in order to generate those jobs and growth but they now have to come
the issue with this report is the fact that we have done a huge amount of work already but we now need to see the pay-off from that work
one of the issues that i know the commissioner is very much aware of and which is reflected in some of the ideas in the single market act which we will be bringing back to parliament in two months time is the fact that member states need to start using and deploying these new instruments and encouraging businesses to use them
colleagues will remember that this is targeted very much at small- and medium-sized enterprises
they are the ones as all the work in the previous commission showed which were discouraged by the administrative barriers they encountered at all stages from going to set up and deliver services within the european union which of course is a right they have under the treaties
we now need to really make that work
part of that is to overcome all the ingrained suspicion and problems that they have had and to make it clear that what we have achieved here is probably the biggest single set of deregulatory measures in opening up markets that has ever happened as a result of one single directive we have heard about the thousands of measures that have been changed and similarly the first major investment by member states in promoting the single market to businesses
that is what the points of single contact are all about
they are actually about providing the simple information that a business needs if it wants to go and deliver a service in another country that essential research before they start
this is just the first of many reports and many investigations that my committee will continue to make because this is a long-term project
we are just at the beginning of something absolutely crucial for the future of the european economy
