Legislative drafting pages on EUR-Lex, February 2004

A recent addition to the EUR-Lex site is a set of pages relating to legislative drafting. These bring together the key documents on the subject as well as offering links to the relevant national bodies responsible for drafting legislation. With the exception of a couple of gaps, the information for current member states provides a useful starting point. The structure is in place to include links to the acceding states, though few live links have yet been added. Heading the main page is the Joint practical guide, the publication of the Commission, Council and Parliament on the drafting of legislation. The other two sections are reference documents; and manuals, guides and rules of procedures. Under both these headings, clicking on the down arrows on the right of the screen produces an extended list of references with hyperlinks to the full texts. The reference documents page hides yet another level under “other documents”. Anyone wanting quick and easy access to the key texts on codification, recasting, quality of drafting, simplification or better lawmaking should try using http://europa.eu.int/eur-lex/en/about/techleg/index.html as an entry point.