Category: Archive – 2010

Unfortunately many top civil servants and heads of Authorities and State Corporations have not seen the Malta SBA Fact Sheet and the Report entitled "SMEs Under Pressure", both compiled by the Enterprise and Industry Directorate General of the European Commission.

They would have been shocked to learn that Maltese Authorities rank among the least SME-friendly in the whole of the EU, and most of the blame lies squarely with the majority of these top Maltese public sector bureaucrats and some of their political masters. "It's a shame that their attitude to micro and small businesses gives Malta such a bad name" says Vince Farrugia GRTU Director General.

 The last group of SMEs, members of GRTU, to receive an uncalled for load of these bureaucrats' negativity are Petrol Station Owners. At the moment these small entrepreneurs are under tremendous pressure to find the necessary €26 million needed to bring their petrol stations up to the latest EU standards without drastically cutting further into the falling profitability of their enterprises and without loading consumers with price increases beyond what they already have to burden as fuel prices keep rising. The last thing they expect on top of this situation was an attack from Enemalta on their economic viability rather than assistance the EU is insisting they should be given, to meet the great challenge.

Yet incredibly rather than cooperation from Enemalta's Directors, so that acceptable solutions can be found to meet the challenges, Petrol Station owners have now abruptly been informed that Enemalta has decided to refuse to transfer to the Petrol Stations the centrally managed Fund in order to keep it in a Central Fund to manage and upgrade costs, instead putting the money aside to be received by station owners as part of their profit margins. Enemalta has not only frozen this income but has in addition decided to abandon all previous agreements with GRTU and in addition force Petrol Station Owners to accept a forced profit reduction on every litre of fuel purchased from Enemalta.

"If you don't like our prices, buy elsewhere" Enemalta told Petrol Station Owners when both Enemalta and MRA know very well that on Petrol Enemalta has a complete monopoly and on Diesel there's no alternative supplier that can supply all the stations. In addition, Enemalta is obliged at law to furnish the market.

GRTU has now referred the issue to the Minister of Finance as Enemalta Corporation is still 100% government owned. The alternative was an immediate closure of all petrol stations as Enemalta's impositions are impossible to accept.  "The pressure on Petrol Station owners is most unjust and absolutely uncalled for and unacceptable in the current circumstances" wrote Vince Farrugia on behalf of Petrol Station owners to the Ministry. "It is important that we find  solutions to this impasse without much ado as there is no industrial relations or business sense behind the action of Enemalta". For GRTU it is a great affront that SMEs are treated in this manner.

"This is the question construction workers who have been told to come and lobby at GRTU have asked us" says Vince Farrugia GRTU Director General.

The increases in the charges imposed by MEPA on developers are no joke. Developers are being overloaded with additional tens of thousand of euros in extra charges, at a time when many developers are going on with projects merely to keep their enterprise going and to keep their workers occupied.

One leading contractor very bluntly told the Prime Minister at our Villa Fransica meeting "don't challenge us, we're overloaded with unsold property, we are inventing work to keep hundreds of valuable workers who have worked with us for years and we dearly like to keep employed, but if you think the jobs of our people are less worthy than the jobs of other workers working in factories owned by foreigners, then we'll take your lead and start discharging. We have already shed all temporary workers, part-timers and all sub-contracts". As usual the message fell on deaf ears.

The charges were raised without even consulting with the Users Committee at MEPA or with the Building Industry Consultative Council (BICC), where GRTU stands on behalf of employers in the building industry sits. Why bother? Now developers and contractors are also getting the insults. "We cannot afford to subsidies developers and contractors" declares Parliamentary Secretary Hon Mario Demarco. As if anybody in construction has asked for any subsidy or for any dockyard workers or bus-owner style deal of government fat hand-out!

Employers in the Construction Industry employ thousands of workers, pay millions in taxes and supply the country with homes, factories, hotels and all the projects that make this country worth living in. "It's not subsidies we seek Hon Prime Minister", they told Dr Gonzi at Villa Fransica, "we want respect, we want equal treatment. If your government does not punish other employers in other sectors, why punish us? Who would employ the thousands we employ if we all decide to stop seeking new work and accept the pressure the Banks are making on us all to stop?"

Commission seeks contract law solutions to smooth Single Market for consumers & businesses

Contracts are the basic building blocks for relationships between businesses and consumers. The European Union's Single Market is built on contract laws. However, businesses – particularly small and medium-sized companies – are hampered in cross-border sales because they must follow different contract laws for each of the EU's 27 Member States.

Only 8% of consumers buy online from another Member State. In addition, 61% of cross-border sales are rejected because traders refuse to serve the consumer's country. This is largely due to regulatory barriers and legal uncertainty about the applicable rules. To address some of these problems and boost the potential of Europe's Single Market, the European Commission proposed today, in a strategic policy paper, several options for a more coherent approach to contract law. The goal is to bring more legal certainty for businesses and simpler rules for consumers. A public consultation on the policy paper will run until 31 January 2011.

"I call on consumers and businesses from all 27 Member States to contribute actively to the Commission's public consultation. This is certainly a time of crisis for Europe's economy. But it is also a time where we have a historic opportunity to drive economic growth by easing the cost of cross-border transactions" said Vice-President Viviane Reding, the EU's Justice Commissioner.

Contracts are essential for running businesses and making sales to consumers. They formalise an agreement between parties and can cover a broad range of matters, including the sale of goods and the provision of a service like the booking a flight or obtaining a loan. In a business-to-consumer contract, for example, an Irish consumer buys an MP3 player online from a French retailer. In this case, Irish contract law would apply if the French retailer has designed his website for Irish consumers

Europe's Single Market is based on a wide variety of contracts that are governed by different national contract laws. The co-existence of different rules can lead to additional transaction costs, increased legal uncertainty for businesses and lack of consumer confidence. Both consumers and businesses face significant barriers when they seek to take advantage of the EU's Single Market. Transaction costs (like adapting contractual terms and commercial policies or obtaining translation of the rules) and legal uncertainty involved in dealing with foreign contract laws make it particularly hard for small and medium-sized enterprises, which make up 99% of all enterprises in the EU, to expand within the Single Market.

The Commission, therefore, proposed different ways to make contract law more coherent in a Green Paper adopted today. Among the policy options considered are:

• The publication on the web of (non-binding) model contract rules which could be used in Europe's Single Market.
• A (binding or non-binding) "toolbox" for EU lawmakers when they adopt new legislation to ensure better and more coherent rules.
• A Contract Law Recommendation that would call on EU Member States to include a European contract law into their national legal systems, thereby partly following the model of the United States where all but one of the 50 states voluntarily adopted the Uniform Commercial Code.
• An optional European Contract Law (or a "28^th system"), which could be chosen freely by consumers and businesses in their contractual relations. This optional law would be an alternative to the existing national contract laws and would be available in all languages. It could apply in cross-border contracts only, or in both cross-border and domestic contracts. It would have to guarantee a high level of consumer protection and legal certainty throughout the life cycle of a contract
• Harmonisation of national contract laws by means of an EU Directive.
• Full harmonisation of national contract laws by means of an EU Regulation.
• The creation of a full-fledged European Civil Code, replacing all national rules on contracts.

Background

Under the Europe 2020 strategy – launched by President José Manuel Barroso on 3 March 2010, the Commission is currently tackling bottlenecks in the Single Market to drive economic recovery. This includes working on harmonised solutions for consumer contracts, EU model contract clauses and making progress towards an optional European contract law. The creation of an optional contract law instrument is also one of the key actions in the Commission's Digital Agenda for Europe issued on 19 May 2010.

The European Parliament gave its backing to the idea of an optional European Contract Law in a resolution on 25 November 2009. Former Internal Market and Competition Commissioner Mario Monti also identified in his Single Market Report of 9 May the advantages that an optional "28^th system" would bring for consumers and businesses.

On 12 May, the Commission convened a new expert group to transform the so-called "Draft Common Frame of Reference" – a first draft for a European contract law developed over the past years under the EU's Research Programme – into a simple, user-friendly workable solution adapted to the needs of consumers and the reality of the business environment (IP/10/595). The group, which is composed of legal experts and practitioners from all over Europe, is currently meeting once a month in Brussels. The public consultation started today will help ensure that the group addresses the most important problems faced today by consumers and businesses in the field of contract law. The consultation will run until 31 January 2011. Its results will help the Commission prepare proposals before 2012.

The
Slovenian company is
specialised in composition and fitting of electrical and electronic components,
machining and manual inserting of standard electronic components, production of
printed circuit boards. The company is offering trade intermediary services (as
agent, representative or distributor), joint venture, and subcontracting
activities as a subcontractor.

A Greek
company specialising in the production,
standardisation and wholesale of wine, requires distributors in the EU and
Balkan countries' market for the distribution of its wines. The company is also
looking for wine producing companies so that it can distribute their products
in the Greek market.

Bulgarian
company, specialized in the production,
trade and installation of aluminium and PVC windows, insect screens (nets),
blinds, security shutters, interior and exterior doors offers subcontracting
activities. The company also offers and requests trade intermediary services
(representation, distribution etc).

French
company, winemakers cooperative founded in
1953, producing very high quality. Bordeaux wine, is looking for and offering
trade intermediary services in Europe. Reciprocal distribution activities are
sought.

A Slovenian
manufacturer of furniture
is providing semi-finished products, custom-made furniture, representations for
furniture and furniture fittings. The company offers trade intermediary
services (as agent, representative or distributor) for Slovenian market and
subcontracting activities to foreign contractors.

A Polish
company which is a furniture designer and
producer with over 30 years of experience is looking for and offering trade
intermediary services. The company is looking for joint venture and reciprocal
production opportunities and is also ready to act as a subcontractor.

Spanish
manufacturer of wines is
looking for trade intermediary partners (agents, distributors and
representatives). Also it is offering distribution services to producers of
high quality wines willing to reach Spanish market. Joint venture collaboration
is also considered.

A Polish
company specialised in processing of fruit
and vegetables is offering and looking for trade intermediary services.

Armenian
company, which is involved in beer
production, offers and is looking for trade intermediaries (agents,
representatives, distributers) willing to find new partners, which are
interested in its products and to find new sales markets. Company's production
corresponds to the Beer Purity Law standards in Germany and in fact the company
has installed a modern beer production-line in newly built production shop.

A Turkish
company manufacturing PVC coated Doors &
Cabinets Systems, furniture for kitchen, bathroom and TV offers and requests :
trade intermediary and merger or exchange of shares, and reciprocal/ production
and subcontracting/ outsourcing.

GRTU warmly welcomed the proposal on translation arrangements for the future Community patent presented by the European Commission at the end of last week. The Commission's suggestion was made to build on the official languages of the European Patent Office for filing patent requests, while reimbursing applicants for the costs of translation from another idiom into an official EPO language and providing machine translation for all other EU languages if need be, the results of which must be of high quality.

This will dramatically reduce filing and translation costs and provide innovative SMEs in Europe with a cost-effective method to protect their intellectual property rights. Secretary General Andrea Benassi offered the following comments:

The proposal by the European Commission will succeed to reduce the number of languages and has the potential to inject new momentum into the Community patent. The system proposed by Commissioner Barnier will dramatically reduce translation costs, which are often more than half of the total expenses when applying for a patent, while ensuring the possibility of submitting patent requests in all the official EU languages. Reduced costs will be particularly beneficial for innovative SMEs, which have been hampered for too long by excessive filing expenses. More affordable patents will act as a driver for innovation and foster competitiveness in the single market and beyond. This will allow Europe to catch up on R&D and innovation with its international competitors.

Europe cannot afford any longer a single market in which the same invention is subject to up to 27 different legal systems. The Belgian Presidency, which started on the same day of the Commission proposal, has all the elements on the table to put an end to this dysfunctional system. We trust that it will work to do so as of today.

The outgoing Spanish Presidency of the EU published a political declaration on eco-innovation, further to the cancellation of a European Forum on the topic scheduled to take place in Bilbao in April.

The "Bilbao Declaration" tackles the main problems SMEs face in the area of eco-innovation and sets out several action points that can greatly contribute to the uptake of eco-innovation by SMEs. These include policies to accelerate demand, support for SMEs in entering markets, public funding and private-sector investment, training, green partnerships, international trade and co-operation as well as political support. The Bilbao Declaration is supposed to feed into the European Commission's Eco-Innovation Action Plan due for next autumn.

Previously considered a luxury due to high service fees, mobile telephony has become an essential part of everyday life. The widespread use of such a technological advancement and increase of mobile operators has led to decreases in charges. However, cross-border mobile services (also known as roaming) remain considerably higher despite the progression of the European internal market.

In response to such a price barrier, the European Commission successfully pushed for the introduction of a regulation pushing for the gradual reduction of voice roaming caps. The regulation, approved in 2009, also featured the adoption of guarantees against any bill shocks for data roaming users.

Although domestic pricing plans remain within the scope of national regulators, the European Commission has pushed for further decreases in pricing levels. On July 1, a new roaming cap addressing cross-border calls and internet downloads came into effect. Among the main price cap adjustments, data roaming will undergo a reduction from €1 to €0.80 cents per megabyte (MB), with the upward limits for making calls to be reduced by 4 cents to 39 cents per cents and receiving calls also being cut by 4 cents to 15 cents. Additional cuts to data roaming charges will be enacted next year as the cap is expected to be revised downward to 50 cents per MB.

Equally important, travellers' data roaming bills will be limited to €500 unless specified otherwise by customers. Users will also be informed by their operators once they reach 80% of their mobile data roaming plan. This is considered to be beneficial to European consumers and businesses due to the increased use of internet-enabled devices such as laptops and smart phones. Furthermore, the action taken to address pricing discrepancies plays a crucial role in the Digital Agenda Manifesto, with the document stating that "the difference between roaming and national tariffs should approach zero by 2015".

Info @ MEUSAC News

The Tunisian Union of Industry, Trade and Handicrafts (UTICA) will be organising the 11th session of the international Show of Agriculture, Agricultural Machinery and Fishing "SIAMAP", between 19th and 23rd October 2011 in the Exhibition Park of Kram, Tuinisia, under the patronage of his Excellency, Mr. Zine El Abidine ben ali, President of the Republic of Tunisia. More information on this show could be found int he Web Site on the following address: www.siamap.com.tn.

The Council of Ministers responsible for employment, social policy, health and consumer affairs agreed on a draft Directive concerning patients' rights in cross-border health care. This agreement was backed by Spain, which is holding the Presidency of the Council of Ministers and which came up with a compromise backed by the other Member States, including Malta. Spain feared that it would be burdened with the costs of healthcare for thousands of northern European pensioners living in retirement on the Spanish coast.

Minister of Health Dr Joe Cassar stated that "this directive will provide clearer rights and legal assurance for the patients who wish to pursue treatment across the borders." Health care will be provided to patients who are EU citizens in any Member State, provided that they are entitled to this treatment in the country of which they are citizens. Among the provisions found in the Directive, Member States have to ensure, via national contact points, that patients from other EU Member States receive information on safety and quality standards on their territory. Member States may "limit the application of the rules on reimbursement for cross-border health care" if it proves unworkable. Cooperation between Member States in the field of health care must also be strengthened and there has to be greater recognition of prescriptions issued in another Member State.

"This is an important step that allows us to move forward on this," said John Dalli, European Commissioner for Health and Consumer Policy. This agreement clears the way for a final version of the law to be adopted in the autumn.  Information at MEUSAC News