How big is the acquis communautaire?

The EU Commission has long claimed that the acquis communautaire – the body of EU legislation which European companies, charities and individuals have to comply with - is roughly 80,000 pages long. However, research by Open Europe suggests that such estimates are seriously out of date.

A huge increase in the burden of EU regulation over the last ten years is now visible even in the physical volume of EU legislation. We found that the EU has passed a staggering 666,879 pages of law since its inception in 1957, 26% of which are still active. Thus we calculate that the true size of the active acquis communautaire is over 170,000 pages long - more than double the number of pages that is normally claimed by the EU Commission and other commentators.

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