Better Regulation: European Commission seeks to simplify the acquis communautaire, February 2003

The European Commission came a step closer to simplifying the EU's complicated and lengthy body of legislation on 11 February 2003 with the adoption of a Communication setting out a detailed Action Plan for streamlining and improving the EU's acquis communautiare.

The Communication is the latest in a series of efforts under the Better Regulation Initiative launched in June 2002, which aims to ensure an improved standard of regulation in the EU's daily legislative work making it easier for business and citizens alike to navigate their way through EU law. The European Commission believes that a significant simplification of EU law could help the European businesses to become more competitive thereby contributing to the goal, set out at the Lisbon European Council in 2000, of becoming the world's most competitive knowledge-based economy by 2010.

By the end of 2002, the body of binding secondary legislation adopted by EU institutions amounted to 97,000 pages of the Official Journal (OJ), the latest action plan foresees the immediate removal of any obsolete legislation which is estimated to account for 1,000 pages of the OJ with a further 35,000 pages possibly being removed by 2005. The action plan focuses on four key areas of action:

• Simplification: In addition to the re-drafting of existing legislative texts, the European Commission proposes creating more efficient, flexible and proportionate rules. Using a set of prioritisation indicators, specific priority sectors and legal acts have been identified for simplification. In the first phase, work will focus on areas such as industrial products, agriculture, health and food safety, taxation and customs, employment and social affairs, and the internal market.

• Consolidation: In response to the increasing amount of amending legislation, the European Commission proposes bringing together all the provisions of an act together with any subsequent amendments in a single text thereby facilitating the reading of Community law and reducing its volume.

• Codification: In addition to consolidation, the European Commission proposes a process of codification which will grant any revised simplified texts a formal legal status after normal inter-institutional approval and could reduce the volume of EU law by some 35,000 pages. All codification work will be suspended in the nine months prior to enlargement to ease the administrative burden on the new Member States.

• Repeal: The European Commission also proposes the removal from the acquis of legislation which is clearly outdated or obsolete, either by formal legal repeal or other similar measures. The European Commission has already identified some 450 such acts which could be removed from the acquis.

In addition to these four areas of action, the European Commission is also calling on other EU institutions to work together on proposals aimed at providing a more user friendly presentation and definition of the acquis, including clearer indication of the validity of legal acts and methods to differentiate between generally applicable acts and those with specific purposes.

Commenting on the proposals, Romano Prodi, President of the European Commission said:

'The European Commission is committed to simplifying legislation, in order both to reduce the cost and complexity of doing business in Europe and to make the EU more comprehensible for its citizens in line with our governance objectives. This is only the first step. I'm convinced that through a determined consolidation and codification effort, we can cut back tens of thousands of pages of outdated legal texts by the end of my mandate.'

The Communication will feature strongly on the agenda of the European Council's traditional Spring 'Economic' Summit in Brussels in March 2003 when the European Commission hopes an inter-institutional agreement on several aspects of the Better Regulation Plan will be concluded, after negotiations failed at the Seville European Council in June 2002. European citizens will also be able to voice their opinions on the initiative through the Your Voice section of the Europa's website. The European Commission intends to track the success of the proposals by establishing a scoreboard on the evolution of EU law.

Links:

European Commission:
	11.02.03:	Commission launches major initiative to simplify and streamline EU legislation [IP/03/214]
	Your Voice in Europe
	Action Plan: 'Simplifying and improving the regulatory environment' [COM(2002) 278]
European Sources Online: Financial Times:
	10.02.03:	Brussels to cut quarter of rules to simplify law
European Sources Online: In Focus
	European Commission proposes new initiatives to fulfil the commitment of the White Paper on European Governance to make EU institutions more accountable, June 2002

Helen Bower

Compiled: Wednesday, 12 February 2003

The European Commission adopted a Communication on 11 February 2003 setting out a detailed Action Plan for streamlining and improving the EU's acquis communautiare.