Goods from non-EU countries

22.2.2019

Question for written answer E-000967-19
to the Commission
Rule 130
Viktor Uspaskich (ALDE)

I fully support EU solidarity and the social safety net, which ensure a decent life for EU citizens. But all this places an additional burden on the shoulders of EU entrepreneurs, which translates into higher finished product and commodity prices and is making competition more difficult for EU businesses. That is why there has long been discussion among MEPs about the fact that it is becoming more and more difficult for EU producers to compete with producers from non-EU countries, where there is no social safety net and a preferential tax system is applied to business. The EU is consequently losing its investors. EU producers are increasingly looking eastward — to countries where taxes are lower and there is no social safety net. In cases of this sort the EU is in fact allowing people to be exploited under inhuman conditions in non-EU countries while at the same time adopting resolutions on human rights violations in eastern parts of the world. This creates a dichotomy to the extent that what is tolerated in one instance is criticised in another, and in the end nothing is done.

What is the Commission doing to protect the EU market and its producers from cheap goods from non-EU countries, which have no social safety nets and apply reduced rates of tax?