Clamping down on free-riders

Uit de speech van Commisioner McCreevy ter gelegenheid van de public hearing over thuiskopie:

"I want today’s hearing to consider all the different aspects of this complex issue. In deciding to re-launch this debate I wanted to start things afresh. I am coming to this debate and this hearing with an open mind and an open approach. I have a simple wish. I would like this hearing to be the start of a process. A process through which the main participants in this debate can sit down and calmly discuss a number of the issues that this public consultation has thrown up. I had in mind suggesting a Forum where the Collecting Societies and Industry would look at issues involving cross-border trade and electronic commerce of consumer electronics as well as the basis and calculation of the different levies. I do not want to prescribe what such a forum would discuss but it appears to me that the following points merit attention:

First, clamping down on free-riders - the traders who do not pay the levies - leaving legitimate businesses to shoulder the burden and pay while others do not;

Second, improving the practical modalities of obtaining reimbursement of levies once electronic equipment is exported to another Member State where a new levy is collected; and
Third, seeing if broad principles can be worked out on how levies could be calculated taking into account future technological developments."

Lees de hele speech hier.