Press Release: Better regulation continued: Commission wants to simplify over 1,400 legal acts

The European Commission on 25 October 2005 took another step to deliver on its commitment to modernise EU legislation and cut unnecessary red-tape and over-regulation. It presented a three year programme to simplify the existing thousands of pages of EU legislation ('acquis') adopted since 1957. Following a broad consultation of Member States and stakeholders, the European Commission proposed to repeal, codify, recast or modify 222 basic legislations (all in all more than 1,400 related legal acts) in the next three years. The programme was to be regularly updated. It started off with the most heavily regulated sectors, such as cars, waste and construction. Other sectors such as foodstuffs, cosmetics, pharmaceuticals or services were to follow soon. The Commission also intended to tackle administrative burden, especially for small business, by simplifying cumbersome statistics form-filling or by modernising the customs code to facilitate electronic exchange of information.

• Primary Source

European Commission: Memo: MEMO/05/394, Simplifying EU legislation makes life easier for citizens and enterprises, 25.10.05 http://europa.eu/rapid/pressReleasesAction.do?reference=MEMO/05/394&format=HTML&aged=0&language=EN&guiLanguage=en

European Commission: Speech: SPEECH/05/640, The new simplification initiative, 25.10.05 http://europa.eu/rapid/pressReleasesAction.do?reference=SPEECH/05/640&format=HTML&aged=0&language=EN&guiLanguage=en

---