Response to Commission hearing on Retail Services in the

Internal Market

First, the Danish government would like to thank the Commission for the op-portunity to contribute to the important work on strengthening the Europeanretail market.Below, you will find Danish comments to the report from the Commission,“Towards more efficient and fairer retail services in the internal market for2020”.Due to the fact that the land planning systems have a high impact on the retaillandscape the Member States are strongly motivated to ensure, that landplanning systems supports an efficient retail sector.The accessibility to retailers varies across Member States. This is not only aconsequence of lacking co-ordination of land planning systems, but is alsocaused by the diversity of the Member States, including varying cultures. Dueto the great diversity within the EU the Danish Government believes, that theland planning systems in the Member States are unsuitable to be met withharmonization requirements.The Danish Government believes though, that an evaluation of the nationalschemes and exchange of best practices could likely contribute to optimizingthe land planning systems across the Member States.Furthermore The Danish Government generally supports initiatives to im-prove the conditions for cross-border e-commerce, including for examplesuch initiatives, that the Commission addressed in “A Digital Agenda forEurope”.As for trying to concentrate retail market on lower energy consumption, effi-cient logistics, waste collection and recycling systems and sustainable devel-opment, Denmark is a strong advocate for ensuring such matters. The DanishGovernment generally supports initiatives, which aims to pursue and dis-seminate good environment practices in the retail services. However it is atthe same time important to stress, that in regard to new administrative bur-dens put upon the companies, these must be balanced.Regarding the more specific data applied in the factual and comprehensiveanalysis, the Danish Competition and Consumer Authority has already pro-vided their views on these matters to the Commission.MINISTRY OF ECONOMICAND BUSINESS AFFAIRS