These guidelines have been prepared in order to assist the operation of the European Business Test Panel (EBTP). The guidelines will be provided to companies which have been invited to become members of the Panel with a view to clarifying the roles and responsibilities of panellists, national co-ordinators and Commission services.

1. Panel membership
2. Company information
3. Contact person/e-mail address
4. Participation in consultations
5. Passwords
6. Withdrawal from the Panel
7. Access to results
8. Timetable for consultations
9. National Co-ordinators - your contact points
10. Data security and confidentiality

1. Panel membership

A company can apply for membership to the national coordinator in the country where the company is located. Membership is voluntary and lasts for an undetermined period, with a minimum of one year. Companies are expected to participate actively in consultations. Members are free to indicate publicly that they participate in the EBTP.

Companies which have signed up as members of the Panel are expected to provide a limited amount of information on the nature of their business activity e.g. sector of operation, number of employees, whether they import or export products/services across borders within the EU or outside the EU. This information will only be used to ensure statistical representativity and to facilitate more detailed analysis of results. Members will enter this information themselves when they register, and will be asked to inform their National Co-ordinator to update this information as necessary. This information about the company will be automatically entered in the specific fields (sector, size etc) each time they participate in a consultation.

Companies which accept to become members of the Panel will designate a contact person who, in turn, will take responsibility for ensuring that the appropriate staff of the company contributes to completeing the online questionnaire. Companies shall provide the name of the contact person upon registration.

Companies will also provide an e-mail address to which invitations to consultations and associated documents/information will be sent. It is important that National Co-ordinators are informed about changes of the EBTP contact person or his/her e-mail address.

The Commission will conduct a maximum of 6 to 8 EBTP consultations per year. Consultations will be conducted by means of the Internet. These may concern a variety of issues, both of a general and specific nature, which are likely to impact substantially on European companies.

The consultations will be conducted at a sufficiently early stage in the policy-making process, so that different options can still be examined and likely impacts considered. The questions will often seek to gauge views on alternative options and cost-benefit aspects. The Commission may also use the EBTP to ask more general questions, e.g. about the functioning of the Internal Market.

The Commission will work with Member States’ national co-ordinators to ensure that online questionnaires are as clear as possible. When devising the questionnaires, particular attention will be paid to the time needed to complete it. Questions will as much as possible be structured (i.e. multiple choice form) and the amount of free text will be limited. Panel members are expected to participate in consultations and reply within a reasonable period that will be specified in each case. Panellists will be able to work in their own languages when registering and replying to questionnaires.

In order to achieve a result that is representative for EU business at large companies are expected to participate actively in each consultation. In order to reduce the workload in cases where a Panel member is not interested in a particular topic, each consultation will start with a question on relevance. A consultation that you do not consider relevant or interesting to your company will therefore be quickly replied to as 'not relevant'.

Those who fail to participate regularly in consultations will be contacted and may finally be excluded from further participation in the Panel.

Each panellist will be given an individual username/password by the Commission. The password will allow panellists to participate in consultations.
Log-on details used for on-line consultations should not be divulged to non-company personnel and should be safeguarded. In the event that a password is lost or compromised, the Commission services will issue a new password.

Membership is voluntary and lasts for an undetermined period. In the event that a company wishes to withdraw from the Panel, this should be communicated to the National Co-ordinator as soon as possible.

The Commission will inform panellists about the overall statistical results of the consultations conducted through the EBTP. At a later stage, panellists will also learn about how their views have been taken into account in the further development of the policy under consideration. Information on results and policy considerations will be placed on this website.

Panellists will have a minimum of ten working days within which to reply to a consultation. Where there is no urgency and/or where the content of the consultation is more complex, this period will be considerably longer. A reminder to reply to an ongoing consultation may be sent to companies which have not yet responded.

Each Member State has nominated a national co-ordinator who promotes the business test panel in his/her Member State and liaises with national business organisations and panel members. The national co-ordinator contacts companies or business organisations for recruitment purposes. If you want to become a member of the panel, the co-ordinator will answer any queries you may have about membership and consultations.

• See list of national co-ordinators

The Commission will protect all data (company information etc) supplied by panel members. Individual replies and opinions expressed during the consultation process will be kept until the results have been completely analysed and will be deleted when they have been fully exploited, generally within 3 years from the end of the consultation. The Commission will not disclose or attribute views expressed by individual panellists and will only publish aggregate data on the results of consultation exercises

For further information on data security and confidentiality click on Privacy Statement in the left bar.