Quote of the Week: Far and away the best prize that life offers is the
chance to work hard at work worth doing - Theodore Roosevelt
______________________________________________________________
ESBA WEEKLY of Friday 27 April 2001 - VOL 3 - N° 21
Headlines of WEEK 17:
- TAXATION: Member States remain divided on future EU strategy
- TRANSPARENCY: EU reaches agreement on public access of documents
- HEALTH AND SAFETY: SME Accident Prevention Funding Scheme
- TELEWORK: Commerce sector signs EU-wide agreement
______________________________________________________________
EU / TAXATION
Malmo 21/04/2001: Member States remain divided on future EU strategy
The EU Finance Ministers had an initial discussion on the future
cooperation on taxes during their informal meeting last weekend. The
conclusions of this debate confirmed earlier indications that progress in
this field is unlikely in the near future (see ESBA WEEKLY - Vol 3 - N 10)
as the Member States remain divided over the way in which to achieve
greater coordination (via competition and/or harmonisation). To make the
work of the Council in this field more efficient, the Member States seem
to agree that better coordination could be achieved via a different
sub-group than the Coreper. The Swedish Presidency proposal to create a
permanent high level group on taxes was welcomed by most Member States but
they are still far from an agreement.
Among several other issues, the meeting also discussed energy taxation, a
question blocked since the end of the German Presidency. The Swedish
Presidency would like to speed up the drafting of an energy tax directive,
which should lead to a common structure for energy taxation, but little
progress was made as several countries. The Ministers agreed to define the
structure of taxation before debating the setting of rates.
ESBA URGES MEMBER STATES TO ACHIEVE RAPID PROGRESS IN THIS FIELD AS THE
WHOLE CURRENT TAXATION SYSTEM IS TOO COMPLEX RESULTING IN UNFAIR TREATMENT
OF SMALL BUSINESSES. ESBA REQUESTS MEMBER STATES TO FIND THE RIGHT POLICY
MIX BETWEEN TAX COMPETITON AND HARMONISATION AND CALLS FOR A POLICY OF
FAIR TAX COMPETITION BETWEEN MEMBER STATES AS A MEANS TO REDUCE AND
SIMPLIFY TAXATION.
______________________________________________________________
EU / TRANSPARENCY
Brussels 25/04/2001: EU reaches agreement on public access of documents
Via the co-decision procedure, the Council and the European Parliament
agreed on a compromise on the issue of public access to the documents of
the EU institutions. The European Parliament and the Council still have to
vote formally on its adoption.
By Community law citizens will now have in principle the right to access
all categories of documents, including internal working material and
defence documents. However, the relevant EU institutions may refuse access
based on defined provisions on secrecy. If a request is refused, the
applicant will have the right to appeal to the European ombudsman or to
the Court of Justice.
Whereas the EU institutions argue that the new rules will significantly
improve citizens' access to EU documents, many NGOs were very critical on
what has been achieved and how this has been achieved. For more
information:
http://www.statewatch.org/secreteurope.html
http://www.eu2001.se/eu2001/news/news_read.asp?iInformationID=14361
______________________________________________________________
EU / HEALTH AND SAFETY
Bilbao 25/04/2001: Launch of SME Accident Prevention Funding Scheme
The European Agency for Safety and Health at Work is organising a 5
million initiative to reduce work-related accidents in SMEs. The Agency
issued a call for project proposals providing grants for the provision and
dissemination of effective good practice examples, training and education
schemes and information and communication projects. The budget for the new
scheme was allocated to the Agency by a decision of the European
Parliament at the end of last year.
Accident statistics show that yearly about 4.5 million accidents occur in
the workplace and over 5,500 people are killed in workplace accidents,
with small enterprises facing double incidence rates for fatal accidents
compared to larger companies.
Accident prevention is also the theme of this year’s European Week for
Safety and Health at Work (an information campaign designed to raise
awareness and promote activities to make Europe a safe and health place to
work), which is being coordinated by the European Agency and will run in
Member States in October 2001. More information:
http://osha.eu.int/ew2001/
______________________________________________________________
EU / TELEWORK
Brussels 26/04/2001: Commerce sector signs EU-wide agreement
The social partners (Eurocommerce for the employers and Uni-Europa
commerce as trade union) in the commerce sector (EU's largest sector,
employing 16% of the total workforce) agreed on concrete guidelines for
regulating telework through collective agreements and other arrangements,
giving home-based workers the same statute as any other employee.
It is the first agreement on teleworking after the European Commission
submitted a set of proposed guidelines to form the practical framework for
possible formal negotiations between social partners on the matter.
Horizontal negotiations on teleworking have so far not been launched (see
ESBA WEEKLY - Vol 3 - N 16). Details of the agreement (copy/paste full
link):
http://www.europa.eu.int/rapid/start/cgi/guesten.ksh?p_action.gettxt=gt&do
c=IP/01/616|0|RAPID&lg=EN
______________________________________________________________
UPCOMING EVENTS
Noordwijk aan Zee (NL) 10&11/05/2001: Concerted action seminar on Business
Failure; Theme: Business failure, Entrepreneurship, Good practices. Info:
http://www.ez.nl/businessfailure/index.htm
Brussels (B) 29/05/2001: Make it simple!; Theme: Enterprise Policy, SMEs,
regulations. Info: http://www.unice.org
Lisbon (P) 18&19/06/2001: New strategies for improved health in SME, role
of social partners, policy developments and creating supportive
environments: Info: http://www.bkk.de/gesundheit/health_at_work
_____________________________________________________________
The ESBA Weekly is now sent to an increasing amount of persons with a
direct interest in SMEs.
This bulletin is made in cooperation with LOGOS (http://www.logos-eu.com).
