Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2005-09-27-Speech-2-176"
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"en.20050927.19.2-176"2
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Mr President, ladies and gentlemen, at half past three this afternoon, the Commission adopted a communication on its ‘better lawmaking’ policy, and this communication was immediately forwarded to your House and to the Council. The Commission has undertaken a comprehensive and systematic review of all the draft legislation presented by it prior to 1 January 2004 and not yet adopted, and today sees its announcement of the outcome. I would also like to say that all the things that may have appeared in this or that newspaper do not amount to a decision by the Commission, and that most of them are wrong.
I would like to point out that some proposals are being withdrawn as part of a wide-ranging review of Community policies, although the Commission is retaining the option of, after this process, submitting revised proposals accompanied by a comprehensive assessment of their cost.
I would also like to point out that the Commission, this afternoon, in communicating to the Council and Parliament which proposals it intends to withdraw, is complying with its obligations under the framework agreement on relations between it and Parliament. The proposals selected will be regarded as formally withdrawn only as and when an announcement to this effect is made in the Official Journal.
Today’s communication is concerned with pending proposals for legislation, which constitutes the first part of the Commission’s strategy. As the
itself is not tampered with in any way, it has no direct effect on the economic process. In evaluating the result, I think there are three things that it is important to bear in mind. One is that the number of pending proposals for legislation was far smaller than many had expected. In two-thirds of all cases, the review has led us to the conclusion that there are good reasons for the proposals to be retained, and only one-third of them overall fall short of our requirements in terms of better regulation.
This screening process represents the first test for the credibility of our ‘Better Lawmaking’ policy and will be a trial run for the implementation of the real project, to which I shall now turn. That project is called ‘simplification of the regulatory framework’, and is the biggest project to be embarked on under the ‘Better Lawmaking’ policy. The Commission will now respond to the European Parliament’s resolution, adopted earlier this year, on the renewal of the Lisbon Strategy by proceeding to a comprehensive and systematic review of the European Union’s
. I am talking here about over 20 000 pieces of legislation. At the end of October, the Commission will come to a decision on the principles and criteria by which this will be guided, and on how, organisationally speaking, we are going to get on top of this gargantuan task. The one thing that is certain is that this Herculean labour will demand that all three institutions work as closely together as possible, and the Commission will inform Parliament as soon as a decision has been taken on the procedures and methodology.
The third pillar has to do with the standards applicable to future legislation and the assessment of its impact. The Commission sees it as being of the utmost importance that lawmaking should, in future, be significantly improved and made subject to rigorous standards, and has already decided that all proposals for legislation, White Papers and policy statements underlying its work programme should be accompanied by comprehensive impact assessments. It has recently adopted detailed directives on the methodology to be used and will, next year, commission an external analysis of all the impact assessments already submitted. The Commission is also engaged, with the help of a network of outside experts, in building up the available analysis and scientific knowledge on which impact assessments rely. It regards the new criteria for future lawmaking as decisive in setting our direction for the future, and as making it possible to really cut back bureaucracy and take the burden off businesses and the authorities in the Member States. Some Member States have already adopted a policy of this kind and are achieving remarkable successes with it, freeing business and administration from unnecessary costs and thereby achieving measurable added growth. That is what we want for the European Union as a whole.
This, honourable Members, is something that we will need to discuss in depth, and, while the Commission will have the utmost regard for Parliament’s responsibility, this policy will need to be supported by the Member States. I very much hope that this debate sends out the clear message that, this time, Europe is getting serious about this. One thing we all agree on is that we need better laws and less bureaucracy. Even at this early stage, I can tell you that this project of codifying disparate pieces of legislation is very far from being the end of what we shall do. We shall also be considering whether regulations are still needed at all or whether they need to be made more user-friendly, that is to say, rewritten. Europe’s competitiveness will be one yardstick – but not the only one – whereby this will be measured, and let me say, lest there be any doubt about it, that the object is not to make Europe less integrated than it already is or to alter the balance between the three great policy goals of growth, social cohesion and sustainable development. Far from ‘Better Lawmaking’ being some sort of Trojan horse to undermine Europe, the intention is it should strengthen Europe and make it more efficient.
Today’s communication is a first step, and a relatively small one, towards the completion of the far greater and more demanding project of ‘Better Lawmaking in Europe’, with which we have two ends in view, namely both to build up the public’s confidence in European integration and to counteract the impression that the European Union is a regulation-crazed and bureaucratic monstrosity. At the same time, we want to liberate the forces for growth in the economy that have been tied down by excessive or excessively complex rules and regulations. We must not underestimate the dangerous effect of the perception of Brussels as no more than an enormous and rather impenetrable bureaucracy, and this is where we all – in the Commission, Parliament and the Council – need to demonstrate by our actions that Europe is not like that.
‘Better Lawmaking’ is also an essential part of the initiative for growth and employment. In Brussels, the Commission has stated that it, in its work, gives priority to growth and to the creation of more jobs. It has revised the Lisbon Strategy for growth and employment with this in mind and highlighted the area of policy that can make a decisive contribution to the enhancement of growth and to the creation of jobs.
‘Better Lawmaking’ is one of these core policy areas. From my many, many conversations with representatives of European businesses, I know that many of them regard it, indeed, as the most important. Small, medium-sized and micro-businesses in particular wait with longing to have their burdens removed. Securing Europe’s position as a business location and improving its chances in global competition are both absolutely dependent on our having a successful purge of red tape, annulling regulations that have become meaningless and offering industry and service providers a modern legal framework on which they can rely in the long term.
I will speak plainly to you, honourable Members: this is not about the sort of deregulation that is weighed down with ideological baggage; this is about making regulation better. The single market needs an unambiguous and reliable legal framework, but we must also ensure that our societies are not weighed down with unnecessary bureaucracy, and that the public can be certain that European law is drafted with the greatest possible care and will take effect only where European regulations are absolutely necessary. That is something on which the institutions agree. Let me repeat that we are all in the same boat and share responsibility. That is the political context of the Commission communication on the review of pending legislative proposals. One might describe it as the
of a menu, the main course of which is yet to be served. I do hope, though, that the
goes down well.
This policy forms part of a broader-based strategy, which is itself founded upon three pillars. Firstly, the Commission regularly submits to systematic examination all the legislative proposals it has presented, yet which have not been adopted by the legislator within a given period of time, the object of this exercise being to decide whether the proposals can be withdrawn, or whether decision-making can be made easier by other means.
The Commission has, this year, reviewed all the regulations that were still waiting for adoption on the cut-off date of 1 January 2004, looking to see whether proposals had become obsolete, had been held up in the legislative process for some considerable time, whether their review was called for by reason of new scientific knowledge, changes in the market or other considerations, or whether they met present-day standards in terms of their expected cost and their likely effect on competitiveness.
The end result of this is that, of the 183 proposals it has reviewed, the Commission intends to withdraw 68 on the grounds of their incompatibility with the goals of growth and employment or with the criteria for better lawmaking, their being – quite objectively speaking – no longer relevant, or the improbability of their making further progress through the legislative process in their present form.
In the case of five of the proposals mentioned in the communication, the Commission recommends that the legislative process be proceeded with, although it does, before this happens, wish to submit in-depth economic analyses in order to help the legislative body to come to a decision."@en1
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