Text tabled : A7-0069/2012

  Claudio Morganti (EFD), in writing. – (IT) I voted in favour of this report because it outlines new priorities and addresses deficiencies in this important sector.

First of all, the participation of small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) in the European standardisation process is at last being fostered, thus fully involving the true manufacturing force of the EU. The importance of consulting consumer associations when drawing up standards should also be underlined, and this can be of great help, especially for people with specific needs, such as the disabled.

We therefore hope to have more transparent and representative standardisation, first and foremost to help meet the needs of individuals and smaller businesses.

Of course, more could have been done, for example, proposing that micro-enterprises have free access to regulatory standards. I myself have received a number of complaints from small-business owners who have objectively struggled to meet the costs involved in obtaining these documents that are so essential for their manufacturing processes.

However, there are high research costs which have somehow to be covered; we can therefore regard the text adopted today as a good compromise – as to how it will actually be applied, we will, in any case, have to return to this in more detail at a later stage.