Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2000-10-26-Speech-4-159"
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"en.20001026.6.4-159"2
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". – Mr President, I would like to begin by thanking the rapporteur, Mr Wuermeling, and the Committee on Legal Affairs and the Internal Market for their work on better lawmaking. We are dealing with an extremely important issue. We must always ask ourselves whether we need legislation to solve a problem. The second question is, if we need legislation, should it be at European level or national level? Thirdly, if we decide to legislate at European level, how can we guarantee that the legislation is simple, clear and can be transposed? Fourthly, is there any way other than legislation of meeting the same objective at European level, such as soft law, a code of conduct or co-regulation?
I also agree with the report and views expressed in the discussion here that enlargement will present a major challenge vis-à-vis the quality of legislation, owing to the economic, social and legal problems which the new Member States will bring with them. This must be respected and taken into consideration by EU legislators. Subsidiarity, proportionality, better quality legislation, simple regulation, increased codification: all must become major political issues on which we will focus. Actually, this screening of the existing
is often a very useful exercise in showing that it is not always necessary to legislate at Community level or whether a law is too detailed for legislation at the Community level.
I do not want to go into a deep discussion about the theological or political history of subsidiarity. What is important for the EU institutions is that we have a strong commitment to improving the quality of legislation, especially with regard to subsidiarity. The Commission is making both political and internal efforts to incorporate subsidiarity into legislative proposals. The initiative to prepare a White Paper on governance, for example, is an attempt to promote the principle of subsidiarity at all levels. The rapporteur mentioned the question of soft law recommendations or other agreements. I think they are extremely important issues to discuss. I see here some colleagues of yours who played a considerable part in the regulation on the information society and the Internet. Is it possible to regulate the issues when technology moves extremely fast? Is there a risk that we will put brakes on development if we legislate? Is there a risk that technology will move so fast that the problem will have changed before legislation is ready?
That is the area where we must look at issues with a very open mind. I will take a very personal position by saying that there can be new types of governance here, where regulation and self-regulation can be complementary and not alternatives. But what is important for voluntary agreements or self-regulation is that they must be implemented, we must know that they are enforced, we must know how we can monitor that what has been agreed has happened. Then it is important to see what the European Parliament's role should be in discussions: there can perhaps be open discussions, debates, dialogue, which guarantee that the European Parliament is part of the debate. However, the more we go into the details of information technology, the rapid changes on the Internet, the more convinced I am personally that detailed regulation is not the solution to this problem or, if it is a solution to something, it is not the problem which is faced by information technology.
There are also other areas of the internal market regulations which are very complicated. I will just mention so-called pedestrian-friendly cars, which the Commission will discuss in a few weeks time. This directive could be 64 pages long, extremely detailed, mathematical, and involve a lot of engineering expertise. Is that an area where we should go for detailed regulation, with guarantees that will be implemented everywhere or should we consider whether a voluntary agreement, provided that it can be enforced and controlled, as an alternative?
These are the kind of debates that we need to go through in the next few years. I hope that this report, which we Commissioners were given last year, will in future include subsidiarity, better regulation and assessment of alternatives, while respecting the legislative authority of the Council and Parliament.
Finally, I want to take into account the criticism which we have seen in Parliament's report. It is concise and clear. I will transmit the message to my colleagues in the Commission and the Commission will do its best to react positively to these in the preparation of the next report. I hope that we can continue this debate so that it is not only a routine matter on Thursday afternoon but part of the central debate on Community legislation as a whole."@en1
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