Brussels, 11/02/2003 (Agence Europe) - On Tuesday, the European Commission adopted a communication setting out an ambitious and detailed Framework for Action to simplify, streamline and improve access to the body of EU law. This is the latest stage of the Commission's Better Regulation initiative, a key part of the objective set at the Lisbon Summit in 2000 of making the EU the world's most competitive knowledge-based economy by 2010. The new Commission initiative, which will be handed to the Springtime Summit of 21 March aims to establish a reliable, up-to-date and user-friendly body of EU law for the benefit of citizens, workers and businesses across Europe. The framework for Action comprises a certain number of goals to which are associated specific actions most of which subjected to precise deadlines. The Commission considers that, thanks to its plan based on simplification, consolidation and codification, the volume of legislation could be reduced by as much as 35,000 pages by 2005. End-2002, the body of biding secondary legislation adopted by the European institutions amounted to 97,000 pages of the Official Journal. The Commission stresses that the success of its project depends a great deal on co-operation by the European Parliament and the Council. On this point, a Community source close to the issue declared on Tuesday that there was already "indications of positive responses".
The Commission has already taken many initiatives to simplify community legislation and reduce the volume. The 11 February document has the originality of for the first time presenting a comprehensive policy for the whole of the body of binding Community secondary legislation an examining its organisation and presentation. It presents a detailed programme aimed at abolishing legal texts that have become obsolete or outdated, re-writing texts so as to make them more coherent and easier to understand and well a reduce their volume, and to offer access to Community legislation more user-friendly. It is thus engaging in a gradual process of modifying and simplifying existing legislation that should end late - 2004. To follow progress made, the Commission will establish scoreboard on developments in Community legislation.
It being simplification, the Commission's initiative recommends placing greater emphasis on simplifying the substance of EU policies and the form of earlier legislative approaches. This simplification goes beyond simple re-drafting of existing legislative texts and implies an effort to create more efficient, flexible and proportionate rules for those who have to respect and enforce them. In concrete terms, the Commission suggests basing its work on a comprehensive set of prioritisation indicators for simplification to identify specific priority sectors and legal acts. In the initial phase (until September 2003), simplification work will focus on areas such as industrial products, agriculture, health and food safety, taxation and customs, employment and social affairs, competition and the internal market. Following dialogue with other institutions and interested parties, the Commission will pursue its work in two other phases (until March 2004 and then December 2004). By way of example, a priority sector identified by the Commission is the type-approval system for passenger cars which alone accounts for some 170 legal acts, taking up about 3,500 pages of the Official Journal. The Commission stresses that this could be considerably reduced through a new and simpler policy and legislative approach.
Community legislation needs constantly to be up-dated to reflect progress in science, society, and international relations. This results in layer-upon-layer of amending legislation which obliges users to consult both the original legislation and the subsequent amendments to understand the law in force. Given this situation, existing programmes have already led to the "consolidation" (regrouping into a single text of all provisions of an act and its later amendments) of two-thirds of the Community acquis. As for "codification", it offers the same advantages as well as a formal legal status of the new texts, after normal inter-institutional approval. In 2001, the Commission launched a programme to codify, wherever possible, existing legislation and estimated, at the time, that this process could reduce the volume of legislation by some 35,000 pages when completed, without changing the law itself. While codification work will be suspended in the nine months prior to enlargement to ease the administrative burden on Member States, the current Commission exercise is due to be completed by the end of 2005. The Council and European Parliament should thus be able to complete their work by the end of 2006. To ensure that the future body of legislation remains manageable, the Commission also proposes to more systematically ensure consolidation and codification whenever legislation is amended. It also intends proposing abolishing the acquis of legislation which is clearly outdated and obsolete, either to formal legal repeal or other similar measures. It has already identified 450 laws that could be removed from the Acquis, which represent 1,000 pages from the Official Journal.
The Commission is also seeking to facilitate access to the Acquis by improving the presentation and Acquis consultation methods (repertoire of legislation in force, databases such as Celex and Eur-Lex). On this point, it is proposing to enhance inter-institutional cooperation in order to present proposals on the matter this year. This would particularly involve indicating more clearly whether legal Acts were still in force or if they were obsolete, as well as laying down the means for distinguishing between the general application of acts and those having specific objectives. It has also been proposed that secondary legislation in force and general application be clarified, separately from legislation with less general relevance.
While the Commission can undertake much of this work on its own, the success of the project depends to a great extent on the full and active cooperation of the European Parliament and the Council, because amending or repealing laws requires the active involvement of these institutions. The Commission hopes that the other institutions will give priority to concluding an inter-institutional agreement on better regulation, including adapted procedures for simplification and codification.
The Commission will launch, within the next few days, a public consultation on the Communication at the following address: ( http: //europa.eu.int/yourvoice/ ).