The Court confirmed the violation of Article 81 EC. The companies were declared guilty of having agreements in order to share public and private contracts for the sale, installation and maintenance of elevators and escalators, thereby drowning the regime of free competition in Belgium, Germany, Luxembourg and the Netherlands.

 The Court dismissed the appeals brought by Otis, Kone and Schindler. Fines have been maintained, respectively, to € 225mln, € 144mln and € 142mln. However, because of the accusation of recidivism was not justified, the fine imposed on ThyssenKrupp has been reduced to € 320mln (reduction of €160mln).

Press Release General Court of the European Union

The European Council of 4 February, in its conclusions on the “Innovation Union”, invited the Commission “to make proposals to accelerate, simplify and modernize standardization procedures, notably to allow standards developed by industry to be turned into European standards”.

European Commission Vice-President Antonio Tajani, responsible for industry and entrepreneurship said: “To be successful, Europe needs to react to the challenge of rapid innovation, sustainability, convergence of technologies, and fierce global competition. A dynamic European standardization system is essential to spur quality and innovation and to strengthen Europe’s role as a global economic player. Moreover, standards allow us all to have the best quality and sustainable products for a lower price. Standardization is also a key issue for the well functioning of our internal market.”

The most important steps that the Commission took today to strengthen the system of standard-setting in Europe and to implement the commitments of the Europe 2020 flagships are: the promotion of more international standards in those economic sectors where Europe is a global leader, the development of more market-driven European standards for services to give companies commercial advantages, standards elaboration in the ICT sector and a stronger cooperation with the leading standardization organizations in Europe (i.e. CEN, CENELEC and ETSI) so that their standards will be available more rapidly.

Businesses using these standards can make their products more compatible with other products so that consumers will have a broader choice at a lower price.

New European standards will be drafted with the help of organizations representing consumers, small businesses and environmental and social organizations. They will be functional to pursuit policies of sustainability, innovation and assisting the protected categories, opening of markets, consumer protection, protection of safety and savings for businesses and consumers too.

Among the priorities the Commission has determined, in the proposal for a Regulation, to prepare an annual work program on standards, to undertake a review of the directive on general products safety, to establish a high-level group for services to businesses and the undertaking for the standardization of the services sector.

Some of the actions proposed will be implemented immediately while the others need the approval of the European Parliament and the Council.

Proposal for a Regulation

Communication from European Commission

hopes Spain and Italy, who are not yet among the participants, will join the enhanced cooperation.

Link to the text: http://eur-lex.europa.eu/LexUriServ/LexUriServ.do?uri=COM:2011:0216:FIN:EN:PDF

Each instrument is accompanied by a flagship initiative on which the Commission undertakes to make proposals during the coming months, the aim being to gain final approval from the European Parliament and the Council before the end of 2012. Each action also contains other, equally important proposals which should benefit from the momentum generated by the flagship initiative in order to make progress – sometimes in parallel and sometimes at a slightly slower rate.

 “We want Europe to be a respected power. This market of 500 million consumers and citizens is the basis of our economy. We want Europe to be not just only a place of consumption, it must keep a productive base. We want to work on new, greener, more sustainable and more innovative growth”, said Michel Barnier, the commissioner for the single market.

“Our priority is growth and jobs”, said José Manuel Barroso, the president of the European Commission.

Moreover these proposals are also doing all we can to help companies, especially to facilitate the access of 21 million SMEs to finance to help them to grow. Amongst other things the Commission will propose to give a passport to venture capital funds so they can invest in SMEs in other member states. The aim is also to simplify the business environment with an overhaul of the public procurement rules and by lifting the accounting burden from 7 million small and micro enterprises, with potential savings of 7.4 billion euro.

Besides in order to make life easier for businesses they will reduce the regulatory and administrative constraints, particularly those on SMEs. Simplifying accounting standards for businesses represents potential annual savings of €1.5 billion for 1.1 million SMEs, and €5.2 billion for 5.9 million “very small businesses”.

Other priorities concern: citizens’ mobility, intellectual property rights, the increase of consumers’ confidence, the improvement of services, more modern and efficient transport and telecoms’ networks, taxation, social cohesion and the simplification of public procurements’ procedures.

Link to Single Market Act http://ec.europa.eu/internal_market/smact/docs/20110413-communication_en.pdf#page=2

Summary:

• EFESME took part to Lift-S Egysület General Assembly;

• LIFT Milano 2010;

• EFESME’s participation to International Lift fairs;

• EU Patent: all clear for enhanced cooperation;

• Hungarian Presidency of the EU;

• NORMAPME’s experts meeting: the Experience of SMEs in Standardisation;

• Next EFESME’s General Assembly and Board of Directors.