Council of Ministers (Hansard, 9 March 1983)

§ Mr. Peter Rees

The meeting of the Council of Ministers held on 1 March, which I attended, was the second to be devoted exclusively to questions of the internal market of the European Community. Further progress was made with the programme of measures designed to eliminate some of the remaining barriers to trade within the Community.

Agreement was reached on the establishment of an information exchange on technical standards and regulations. When implemented, this will provide earlier advice about new technical standards and regulations being drawn up in other member states and give the opportunity to influence such national standards or regulations where they may have an effect on intra-Community trade. This modest but useful measure should assist industry to design products with greater knowledge of standards elsewhere in the Community and greater confidence that their products will meet any necessary requirements.

Agreement was also reached on a directive on the taxation of temporarily imported vehicles and of permanent imports of personal property. This introduces a number of simplifications and reliefs on imports of personal property, in particular wedding gifts. In addition we had a valuable exchange of views on the proposal for Community certification of goods of third country origin as a result of which useful progress was made towards a possible solution to this question. We also discussed a number of other frontier facilitation measures, including a proposal for a single administrative document for imports, exports and transit of goods within the Community. Some further progress was made towards reaching solutions. In particular, good progress was made on a proposal to reduce Excise checks at borders on vehicles' fuel tanks.

The next meeting of the Council on internal market matters is planned for April, when we expect to discuss a programme of further measures for liberalisation of intra-Community trade, including trade in services.