SMET agrees on the closure of 2 of its most successful projects

On 26 November, the Single Market Enforcement Taskforce (SMET) had its last 2024 meeting, which was chaired by GROW's Director-General Kerstin Jorna. The main purpose was to discuss the closure of 2 SMET projects – “Streamlining permitting for wind and solar energy projects” and “Tackling IBAN discrimination”.  

For almost 3 years, SMET dedicated significant efforts to help eliminating over 90 concrete administrative barriers to renewables permitting and to promote 5 good practices with strong potential for improving the process. More than 60% of these barriers have already been addressed and around 80% of the above practices have been introduced. 

After the closure, monitoring of the ongoing measures will continue and updates will be provided on the SMET website. Stakeholders were strongly involved at all stages of the project, which contributed significantly to achieving good results. At the meeting Giles Dickson, CEO of Wind Europe stated that “SMET was extremely helpful”.

The project on IBAN discrimination focused on 5 areas, where practices of rejecting payments from and to IBAN accounts from other EU countries happen more often. SMET has helped to raise awareness of this problem and mobilised responsible national authorities to address these existing discrimination practices. 

Positive results were achieved in the public sector, while actions for tackling IBAN discrimination by telecoms are ongoing in some Member States. SMET has agreed to continue monitoring these issues and to report new developments on its dedicated website. Stakeholders also confirmed improvements in this area, with a significant decrease of complaints received through the “Accept my IBAN” platform.