Brussels wants to be able to force key productions and national reserves to be prioritized in cases of emergency

BRUSELAS, 19 Sep. (EUROPA PRESS) -

The European Commission has requested this Monday emergency powers to be able to force companies on European soil to prioritize certain productions or impose on Member States the storage of basic goods in emergency situations, to avoid supply crises as happened with masks and other essential items during the coronavirus pandemic, when some member countries prevented the passage of goods to other partners.

"Covid taught us that the Single Market is not perfect. It is strong but not unbreakable, unilateral measures and lack of transparency damaged the free movement of goods when we needed it most," the vice president warned at a press conference in Brussels. Commissioner for Competition, Margrethe Vestager, recalling how some Member States prevented the export of essential medical supplies to partner countries in the first weeks of the crisis.

That is why Brussels is now proposing to create a new emergency instrument to intervene in the internal market that allows a coordinated response based on a risk scale, with different measures depending on whether it is a "preparation, alert or emergency".

In this way, the first step is to have a coordination and communication network between Member States and the European Commission to have adequate contingency plans before the bloc finds itself in an emergency situation.

If the crisis leads to an alert situation for the proper functioning of the single market, the Member States, hand in hand with Brussels, will have to supervise the supply chains to guarantee that there are sufficient reserves of the goods considered essential and also that there are no obstacles to their free movement through the common space.

In this surveillance phase, the Community Executive wants to be able to define the categories of goods that should be set up as strategic reserves and to be able to request information from the Member States on their own reserves, coordinate their efforts, exchange information and draw up lists of targets. In case of not reaching the desired storage levels, Brussels could impose precise storage targets on one or more member countries.

Finally, if the scenario is that of an emergency due to a lack of supply or distribution problems, the Member States will be prohibited from adopting restrictions on the movement of goods except in "exceptional" and justified situations.

In addition, Brussels may recommend to the Member States that they guarantee the availability of certain productions by facilitating the expansion or reorientation of production plants or speeding up the granting of permits for these goods, as well as facilitating the distribution of strategic reserves in a specific manner.

In the emergency framework, the community proposal, which must still be negotiated between the Twenty-seven and the European Parliament, advocates empowering the Commission to request information from companies and to ask them to prioritize key orders in a crisis situation, a reserved request to exceptional situations but that the companies will only be able to reject if they show "serious reasons" that justify the refusal or they will be exposed to sanctions.