Does the Commission find the proposals to be feasible? Is the three years deadline realistic?
The Commission considers the recommendations to be sensible and balanced. Making them a reality could be, however, a challenging exercise, in particular when tax barriers need to be tackled. Planned discussions with national authorities and other stakeholders, as well as on-going research, will help the Commission to assess the proposals’ suitability. The Commission’s analysis will be developed during the next months and will feed into the White Paper to be adopted in November 2006. The White Paper will present the definite set of measures that the Commission intends to implement. For those measures requiring changes to the Directive, the legislative process will be launched immediately afterwards. Given the time required to adopt legislative proposals (minimum 24 months) and the usual two years implementation period, the three years deadline can be seen as rather tight.
