Four years after the Commission adopted its Transport White Paper, a CEPS Task Force was formed to review European transport policy and to identify the remaining challenges in this arena. The CEPS Task Force is now publishing its findings, against the background of a forthcoming mid-term review by the Commission of EU progress towards a single market for transport. It finds that while progress has been made towards a coherent, EU-wide road transport policy, less has been achieved for rail, air and sea in recent years.

This report analyses to what extent the objectives of International Financial Reporting Standards (IFRS) are compatible with basic tax principles and could form the starting point for achieving a common consolidated corporate tax base (CCCTB) in Europe. It also provides constructive information and guidance to the European Commission to identify the elements of member states’ tax systems that must be considered to achieve convergence to a CCCTB from the starting point of IFRS.

Over the last two decades, renewable energy sources (RES) have attracted heightened interest for a number of different reasons. RES promise strategic improvements in the security of supply, reduce the long-term price volatility to which the EU is subjected as a price-taker for fossil fuels and could offer an enhanced competitive edge for the EU RES technology industry. Renewables also reduce air pollution and greenhouse gas emissions. The cumulative effect of these and other benefits makes a robust case for renewables support.

Much has been achieved on the EU Financial Services Action Plan but challenges remain to make the single financial market work. In this report, the highly successful CEPS Task Force on the post-FSAP agenda presents its 10 policy recommendations aimed at responding to those challenges. The fundamental issues of implementation and enforcement are considered, along with refinements to the EU’s regulatory, supervisory and crisis-management frameworks.

A key message of this report is that full and effective implementation of proposed legislation will be necessary to ensure a true internal market for energy in the EU, but this alone will not be sufficient. In parallel, more attention must be paid to other, less-prominent fields. The report singles out i) the introduction of incentive-based network regulation and ii) the careful design of principal elements of the wholesale market, i.e. trade of electricity and gas for resale (‘wholesale market design and rules’).

Among the big issues facing the EU is the declining working-age population and the effect this decline will have on our economies, businesses and social welfare systems. One way to address this issue is to promote labour mobility throughout the EU. The CEPS-ECHR (European Club for Human Resources) Task Force – chaired by Allan Larsson, former Director-General of DG Employment and Social Affairs – presents its recommendations for a more flexible and secure labour market in this report.

The WTO meeting at Cancún, Mexico this September represents a critical stage in the Doha Development Round of world trade talks. Free trade has been under sustained attack from a wide spectrum of pressure groups since the Seattle debacle in 2000. This CEPS Task Force Report articulates a progressive, business-oriented agenda on trade. It suggests that there is a ‘hierarchy of responsibility’ among negotiating countries.

Incompatibility of pension schemes in the different EU member states is major headache for human resource managers across Europe. The lack of pension portability is a source of additional costs for European enterprises, and mobile employees face a bewildering web of pension rights. Removing obstacles to pension portability within the EU should not only reduce these costs, but support labour mobility and increase revenues from occupational pension schemes through greater competition. Ultimately, it fosters the possibility of a pan-European pension fund for all staff members.

Emissions trading has been shunned for a long time by policy-makers in the European Union as an instrument of environmental policy. It was the Kyoto Protocol that put emissions trading firmly on the EU agenda for the first time. Ever since, discussions on implementing an EU-wide scheme have advanced at a rapid pace and, in the specific case of greenhouse gas emissions trading, the EU and some of its member states have gradually become a major reference point for this instrument.

The rapidly changing economic environment in which the energy sector operates calls for new concepts and policies to deal with security of supply. This Working Party Report brings together decision-makers from the EU institutions and stakeholders – including business, industry and NGOs – to consider how both the problems of and the solutions to security of supply differ today from the past, and how to meet the challenges of security of supply in a liberal market.