Internal Market

Thesaurierungsbegünstigung: Ziel noch unerreicht.

The Internal Market Committee of the EP has voted in favour of restricting the principle of contractual freedom for B2B transactions.

Even if both parties agree on payment periods for more than 60 days such an agreement will only be possible if it does not lead to an »unjustified damage« to one party. Such a solution would unnecessarily restrict the freedom of contract and create legal uncertainty.

The European Commission and the Council are heavily opposed to any restriction of contractual freedom between businesses. Therefore it is not very likely that such a rule will be part of any final legislation even if it will be adopted in Parliament.

However, it is frightening from the perspective of business that the strongest proponents in favour of maximum B2B payment terms were coming from the Liberals and Christian Democrats.

The impact assessment of the European Commission had shown that the core problem of late payments is that companies which are paid late do not want to sue their business partners because they fear to damage a valuable business partnership. New rules would therefore not help much. Instead the focus should be put on a stricter implementation of competition rules. What is more, maximum payment periods would pose a challenge to small and medium-sized enterprises which are dependent on »trade credits«. On top of that the impact assessment has predicted that maximum payment periods would be circumvented by splitting up single contracts into several parts thus creating additional administrative burden for companies.

Maximum payment periods can however be an adequate means to speed up the payment of bills by public authorities. Public authorities have access to private credits at favourable conditions and of course to tax income.