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Single market for goods

The Single Market for goods is one of the Union's most important and continuing priorities which aims to create a user-friendly environment for businesses and consumers.

The main objective of the Directorate General for Enterprise and Industry is to contribute to the design, implementation and improvement of regulatory policy and so make the Single Market work better by removing existing barriers to trade and avoiding the creation of new ones.

Specific tasks aim at

  • preventing technical barriers to trade by monitoring new legislative proposals made by Member States and contributing at the same time to the implementation of the WTO-Agreement on Technical Barriers to Trade;
  • ensuring in the absence of secondary legislation and based on Articles 28 to 30 EC that Member States do not create or maintain barriers to intra Community trade;
  • enacting specific secondary legislation for certain products (including traditional Approach, New Approach, New Legislative Framework) or on horizontal questions such as tackling late payment in commercial transactions and claiming compensation for damage caused by defective products;
  • monitoring the application of Community law.

All these initiatives promote a business and consumer-friendly internal market, based on transparent, simple and consistent rules which offer legal certainty and clarity from which businesses (irrespective of their size) and consumers alike can benefit. Moreover, it makes European business better able to compete on world markets and to meet the challenges ahead.

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