Nine European Union member nations warned the bloc against overstepping its authority when it offers later this year a new plan to protect the bloc’s supply chain during crises, according to a letter obtained by Bloomberg.
The European Commission aims to propose the Single Market Emergency Instrument, a tool to address problems the EU encountered during the Covid-19 pandemic and Russia’s war in Ukraine. The commission has indicated that it wants to push for export controls, stockpiling and forcing companies to report stock levels of critical supplies during emergencies.
The nine countries, including Belgium, Denmark and the Netherlands, warned the commission in a letter sent late last week that its plan is heading in the wrong direction, focusing less on emergency measures and “more about steering industries in a non-crisis environment, to prepare for future unknown crises.”
The countries warned against specific measures including “stockpiling, monitoring and enhancing the resilience of strategic supply chains, mandatory information requests to economic operators and priority orders.”
These ideas “go far beyond the original aim of the instrument” and risk dragging the EU into “uncharted waters without solid preparation and support behind it,” they wrote to the heads of cabinets for Commission President Ursula von der Leyen, Vice Presidents Margrethe Vestager and Valdis Dombrovskis, and Internal Market Commissioner Thierry Breton.
“We call upon the European Commission to stick close to its original plan of adopting an instrument that ensures the free movement of goods, services and people, with greater transparency, coordination, and fast-track decisions, based on clear definition of crises related to free movement within the European Union,” the countries wrote.
The proposal, initially planned for the spring, is taking longer as the EU’s executive arm is digesting lessons learned from the current supply-chain disruptions.
“We are working on how to define a crisis, what governance to declare a crisis and how to trigger measures in our toolbox,” Breton told reporters on Wednesday. These instruments would include strategic reserves and an export authorization mechanism like the one the EU activated for shipping Covid-19 vaccines overseas during the pandemic. This existing instrument “of course will be one of the tools that can be activated but as a last resort measure,” Breton added.
The letter was signed by Belgium, Denmark, Finland, Ireland, Malta, Netherlands, Portugal, Slovenia and Sweden.
The commission launched a consultation on the instrument at the end of April, and an official proposal is now expected to come this fall.
