War on red tape fails to stem tide of complaints

Date: 04/01/01

By Peter Chapman

THE European Commission's four-year drive to cut red tape and make Union rules and regulations easier for companies to follow is still failing to make an impact, warns a parliamentary report to be unveiled later this month.

Its author, Dutch conservative MEP Bert Doorn, lauds the general goals of the Commission's Simplification of Legislation in the Internal Market initiative but says there has not been much in the way of concrete results.

His report states that SLIM's original purpose - to cut the regulatory fat from legislation and improve its overall quality - is more valid today than ever. But SLIM, says Doorn, has not done enough to limit superfluous rules and keep implementation costs low.

Since 1996, just 14 legislative areas ranging from company law to hazardous substances have been examined by SLIM teams. "Seen in the light of the Union's total legislative output, this is a poor return," argues Doorn. "There are two possible conclusions: either the great majority of EU legislation and rules is of such a high quality that there is relatively little to simplify, or that the effectiveness of the SLIM project leaves much to be desired."

Doorn claims the high number of complaints from individuals and firms about excessively complicated rules and regulatory red tape points to the latter explanation. A key problem, his report concludes, is the lack of a centralised approach to what remains essentially an informal initiative. Overly bureaucratic processes - even within the SLIM system itself - are also blamed.

Commission officials acknowledge that the number of areas tackled by SLIM to date is relatively disappointing. But they say they have already proposed reforms to improve the effectiveness of the initiative. They also insist that the work being done by SLIM teams is often complex, and that member states and even MEPs are not always quick to accept their recommendations.

There could nevertheless be better news ahead for companies grappling with national and EU-level red tape. At the Lisbon summit last March, Union leaders demanded increased efforts to address the problem of over-burdensome bureaucracy, inviting the Commission to make proposals this year for improving the quality of legislation.

Sources say the EU executive will table its initial ideas at the Stockholm summit in the spring, although details are still undecided. This blueprint for better quality legislation is likely to be accompanied by a paper re-examining the way the Union actually imposes rules and regulations in a bid to keep track with the needs of the fast-moving economies of the 21st century.

This will include calls for a shift towards more readily adaptable alternatives to formal legislation - such as industry codes of conduct and other forms of self-regulation backed up by the threat of binding laws.

The European Commission's four-year drive to cut red tape and make Union rules and regulations easier for companies to follow is still failing to make an impact, warns a forthcoming parliamentary report.