Brussels, 16/10/2006 (Agence Europe) - As Industry Commissioner Günter Verheugen told the European Parliament legal affairs committee at the start of the month, the Commission will, in mid-November (probably 14th), adopt a new Better Regulation package, a year and a half after the initiative was launched in March 2005 (see EUROPE 8911). The Commission will propose a new package to “radically simplify” Community legislation and “scrap” useless regulation to reduce the bureaucratic burden on companies by a quarter, said the Commissioner speaking just after a press conference last Friday. The result, says Mr Verheugen, would be a reduction in administration costs of almost €150 billion by 2010-2011, “a productivity gain of 1.5 percent of the European Union's gross domestic product after 2010”. “That means €150 billion that companies are not spending on filling forms and sending reports to institutions where nobody reads them,” he went on, before giving assurances that the impact would be stronger than many macro-economic reforms. He said that all the Commissioners supported the new package, which would put forward pilot projects on how to measure bureaucratic costs and set targets for cutting them. Mr Verheugen expects the European Council of March next year to back the package. (eh)