Les eurodéputés allègent les règles de retard de paiement pour les hôpitaux

German Socialist MEP Barbara Weiler, rapporteur on the Late Payments Directive for the Internal Market Committee, said she hoped the revised draft would pass at first reading. She called on MEPs and European governments not to lose sight of the motivation behind revising the rules on late payments.

"SMEs are the reason for this directive. We should not forget that the whole point is to help SMEs improve their liquidity and give them more stability," she said.

Weiler said the European Commission's original plan to impose a 5% up-front penalty on late payers had been dropped in favour of a higher rate of interest on delayed payments. This, she said, was a compromise the Commission made because of the importance it attaches to getting a recast version of the directive through the legislature.

Eurochambres Secretary General Arnaldo Abruzzinisaid it is important that the directive focuses on guaranteeing prompt payments rather than "defining contractual payment terms in business-to-business relations".

"Late payments are a scourge for many businesses, particularly SMEs, and unfair commercial practices and market abuse must be tackled effectively. However, the notion that fixing a maximum payment period will help achieve this is absurd and, frankly, ill-informed," he said.

He said public authorities are at the hart of the late payment culture in many member states but businesses should continue to enjoy flexibility when negotiating their contracts and should not be limited to maximum payment periods.

"Eurochambres thus rejects the extension of payment limits to business-to-business relations as contained in the report on the recast Late Payments Directive adopted by the European Parliament's IMCO committee," Abruzzini said.

The European Builders Confederation, which represents crafts and SMEs in the construction sector, strongly welcomed the vote which it says reflects the parliament's commitment to protect SMEs from unfair late payments by public administrations and other businesses.

The EBC president, Andrea Marconi, said the support shown by MEPs for Barbara Weiler's report is a "strong warning" to the European Council.  "The Parliament’s committee decided to put into practice the principles and the commitments of the Small Business Act and of the Recovery Plan. It is now to the member states to live up to their engagement and adopt an improved late payments directive," he said.

Marconi added that late payments by public authorities discourages SMEs from accessing public procurement tenders and that large companies frequently impose "unfair payment conditions" on small contractors.

Eucomed, the medical technology industry group, says it is disappointed with the approach taken by the committee. The emphasis of the original proposal which focused on late payments in the public sector has been completely changed, it says.

The industry body is also critical of the IMCO's decision to delete a clause which would have forced public authorities to pay a lump sum compensation to contractors who are not paid on time.

The introduction of limits of payment time in the business-to-business transactions does not appear to help SMEs, according to Eucomed.

John Wilkinson, Chief Executive of the medical technology group, said the amount of unpaid invoices across Europe in the medical devices sector if €11 billion and this could continue to rise.

 "It seems to me that this compromise steers clear of addressing the real issue of many public authorities ignoring the terms of contracts that they have signed. If the Council of Ministers confirms these changes we fear that the €11 billion of overdue payments will continue to enlarge and this will starve the industry of the resources needed to bring innovative treatments to patients," he said