In December 2012, the European Commission launched a regulatory fitness and performance programme (REFIT). The purpose of the programme is to identify opportunities to reduce regulatory costs and bureaucratic regulations, simplify regulations in order to meet policy goals, and achieve the benefits of EU regulation at the lowest possible cost.

Evaluation of the Council Directive 86/653/EEC (“the Directive”) was identified as legislation that should be assessed given that it had never been evaluated since it entered into force in 1986 and there was an interest to know whether the Directive was still relevant to stakeholders and had EU added value. The purpose of the evaluation was to assess the functioning of the Directive and whether it remains fit-for purpose in terms of efficiency, effectiveness, relevance, coherence and EU added value.

The consultation process was conducted between August and September 2014. The public consultation yielded 276 stakeholder responses, the vast majority coming from commercial agents or their representatives from mainly four Member States: France, Germany, Austria and the UK. The remaining responses came from stakeholders in nine other Member States (Italy, Netherlands, Belgium, Finland, Denmark, Greece, Spain, Luxemboug and Sweden) and one non EU-country (Norway).

It is interesting to note that the number of commercial agents and the amount of turnover generated have increased between 2008 and 2012. Despite the success of alternative sales channels such as e-commerce, commercial representation remains an attractive commercial proposition and is by no means a declining business model.

The results of the evaluation which were published by the European Commission in July 2015, can be briefly summarized as follows:

. The Directive meets its objective of facilitating cross-border activities;
. The Directive strikes a balance between the interests of the agents and principals and the costs are limited and affordable;
. An overwhelming majority of responding stakeholders saw only positive effects for individual market players, especially better opportunities to participate in and benefit from the internal market;
. The large majority of the Member States who contributed to the evaluation held the view that the Directive had EU added value. This view was confirmed in the stakeholder consultation;
.  The consultation and analysis have not shown any possible conflicts with other policy fields;

On the above basis, the European Commission in its Staff Working Document of 16 July 2015 (SWD (2015) 146 final) has recommended that the Directive is maintained in its current form.