Brussels, 17/06/2004 (Agence Europe) - The European Commission adopted on Wednesday a communication on implementation of its February 2003 initiative on "Updating and Simplifying the Community Acquis", which aims to simplify the substance of secondary Community legislation and reduce the volume of Community acquis. It stresses that, overall, progress has been satisfactory and insists: "The Commission is thus delivering on the priorities of the incoming Dutch Presidency during 2004 and 2005 (Ireland, the Netherlands, Luxembourg and the UK) in the Joint Initiative on Regulatory Reform of January 2004 and the guidelines of the Spring European Council".
The Commission's programme of simplification includes the development of simplification initiatives for over 60 legal acts. The Commission underlines the fact that twenty-five of the initiatives that it has already adopted make a direct contribution to cutting down on administrative red tape, to the benefit of individuals. It adds that, since February 2003, it has screened 21 policy sectors to identify further simplification potential. The Commission is pleased to note that the Competitiveness Council has undertaken to fix its priorities for end 2004 regarding updating and simplification of EU law and will take this into account in its rolling programme. It hopes that full implementation of the Inter-Institutional Agreement on Better Lawmaking can secure early adoption.
On the matter of reducing the volume of Community acquis, the communication adopted on Wednesday recalls that the Commission, in 2001, set itself the goal of reducing the volume of acquis by 25% (which corresponds to around 22,500 pages of the Official Journal). It launched a vast programme for codification of existing legislation which, when completed by the end of 2005, could reduce the acquis by an estimated 30,000-35,000 pages. Preparation of codified texts has increased dramatically over the last 6 months. Formal adoption and publication of codified acts, however, is delayed due to a pre-accession moratorium and the need for translation of the acquis into the new languages (which takes place in the respective Member States). The 25% reduction objective is therefore unlikely to be reached by end-2004 but should be achieved within a reasonable period thereafter. Finally, since the launch of the February 2003 initiative, removal of obsolete legislation has been gaining momentum. The Commission is considering the best way to withdraw nearly 900 legal acts from the acquis. A third of these withdrawals, it says, will be implemented within the next few weeks.