European Commission Wants To 'Spring Clean' EU Legislation

by Robin Pilgrim, LawAndTax-News.com, London

14 February 2003

The European Commission this week presented a proposal to 'spring clean' the body of EU law, known as the acquis communautaire.

According to a statement released on Tuesday: 'The initiative 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.'

No doubt prodded into action by the enlargement negotiations, which require candidate countries to adopt the full acquis and translate the body of law into their national language, the Commission has announced its intention to first address obsolete legislation. It has been estimated that through this measure alone, the Official Journal could be reduced by some 1,000 pages.

In addition to removing 'dead wood' legal texts, however, the European Commission has presented a programme for the rewriting of legal texts 'to make them more coherent and understandable and less voluminous, and to provide more user-friendly access to EU law.'

Commenting on the proposals this week, President of the EC, Romano Prodi announced that:

'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that through a determined consolidation and codification effort, we can cut back tens of thousands of pages of outdated legal texts by the end of my mandate.

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