A4-0201/96

Resolution on the report of the group of independent experts on simplification of Community legislation and administrative provisions ('Deregulation') (COM(95)0288 - C4-0255/95 - SEC(95)1379)

The European Parliament,

- having regard to the report of 21 June 1995 of the group of independent experts on legislative and administrative simplification, established by the Commission in September 1994 to examine the impact of Community and national legislation on employment and competitiveness with a view to finding ways of reducing and simplifying such legislation, and to the reservations expressed by members of the group (COM(95)0288 - C4-0255/95 - SEC(95)1379),

- bearing in mind the European Council's support for the proposal (Corfu and Essen European Councils),

- having regard to the Commission's comments on the report by the group of experts on legislative and administrative simplification (COM(95)0596 - SEC(95)2121),

- having regard to the Commission report to the European Council on the application of the subsidiarity and proportionality principles, on simplification and codification ('Better law-making') (COM(95)0580),

- having regard to its numerous resolutions on the drafting of legislation, transparency, codification and the application of Community law,

- having regard to the report by the Committee on Legal Affairs and Citizens' Rights and the opinions of the Committee on Social Affairs and Employment, the Committee on Economic and Monetary Affairs and Industrial Policy and the Committee on the Environment, Public Health and Consumer Protection (A4- 0201/96),

A. whereas, with the Community employment market in its current state, priority should be given to promoting the creation of jobs with all possibilities fully exploited,

B. whereas the Community's economy is a difficult situation and its competitiveness vis-à-vis rivals outside Europe must be enhanced,

C. whereas legislative proposals at the Community level cannot be seen exclusively from the point of view of their effects on the economy, but must be set within a general policy-orientation framework which has to take account of, inter alia, the rights of the individual European citizen, the rights of workers and environmental and public-health concerns,

D. whereas the term 'legislative simplification' must also to be understood as meaning that Community law must be made accessible to European citizens and the clarity and readability, and hence better comprehensibility, of legal acts must be emphasized as an important factor in their acceptance by citizens,

E. whereas simplifying and reducing legislative texts must not be allowed to lead to a roundabout way of calling the Community patrimony into question,

F. whereas the extent and form of the burden imposed on the economy by Community legislation depend to a large extent on the way in which Community legislation is transposed into national law, which is, however, outside the control of the Community institutions,

G. whereas a checklist for the adoption of legislation must be made an essential part of the preparation of a new legislative proposal in order to curb any tendency to over-regulate, and this should make the legislative procedure at once more open and more effective and at the same time create legislation which ensures the greatest degree of coherency and practicability,

H. whereas the BSE affair demonstrates that hasty and ill-considered deregulation, in this case affecting the running of veterinary services, can have serious and unexpected long-term consequences,

I. whereas application of the subsidiarity principle should not lead to the weakening of European legislation guaranteeing minimum health and safety standards to consumers, the legal rights of consumers, the economic interests of consumers or consumer information,

J. whereas a checklist should also be used as a standard against which to measure existing Community legislation,

1. Adopts the following position on the general statements made in the report by the group of independent experts:

1.1. It is clear that the group of experts has produced general proposals - i.e. proposals detached from individual sectors - intended to present a methodic concept for Community action by the Community institutions and the Member States;

1.2. In chapters 2 to 5 of the report by the group of experts important sectors of the European economy are considered individually. The report states that the group had only a short time in which to complete the report but offers no other convincing justification for the choice of sectors. Such justification would have been desirable in view of the group's mandate from the Commission, considering in particular the choice of social and environmental policy;

1.3. The report readily assumes a correlation between, on the one hand, legislative simplification and, on the other hand, achieving the goal of enhancing the European economy's competitiveness and growth and thereby creating more jobs, but does not go into the links between these factors;

1.4. The group of experts did not examine the link between legislative simplification at the Community level and legislative simplification at the level of the Member States, and in particular did not examine the effects of deregulation at European level entailing a re- nationalization of the applicable provisions and consequences for employment and the functioning of the single market;

1.5. The report is basically short on new approaches. This applies particularly to the checklist for Community legislative proposals contained in Proposals 4 and 6;

1.6. Other proposals (such as Proposal 7 on the publication of expert studies, Proposal 11, on the practical effects of the legislation and Proposal 17 on the Commission's legislative programme) correspond to the Commission's current practice. Moreover, the publication of all measures preparatory to or flanking a legal act does not necessarily make for legislative simplification (main criterion: the accessibility of Community legislation to the European citizen);

1.7. Proposal 1 of the report, which calls for the codification of Community legislation to be accelerated, is to be welcomed. Codification is the most urgent form of simplification and the easiest to achieve. It makes it easier to determine the Community law applicable in each case, thereby reducing costs, and fosters not only the economy's confidence but also the citizen's confidence in the European legal community;

1.8. The call for a programme of simplification which includes transposition into national law should also be supported in principle (Proposal 2 of the report). However, the Commission needs a mandate from the Council of Ministers and the European Council in order to implement such a proposal;

1.9. When examining existing Community law (the 'acquis communautaire') for the purposes of legal simplification, it must be ensured that fields of legislation remain coherent and thus that legal uncertainty and legal inequality are not created;

1.10. Community legislative proposals must be based on the broadest possible dialogue (as called for in Proposal 8 of the report). There should be a hearing held at each stage of conceptual development, and in any event before the drafting of the first legislative proposal. Only consultation developed along those lines allows account to be taken of the aspects of subsidiarity and proportionality. Consultation should in principle take place in an open form (white or green papers). If special knowledge in a given field is required, the persons concerned should be directly involved in preparing the legislative initiatives. Targeted consultation of the Member States should be stepped up;

1.11. The simplification and administration of regulatory texts must take place in strict compliance with the procedures laid down in the Treaties and the prerogatives of the European Parliament, in particular as regards the legal bases and the procedures for amendments to texts called into question;

1.12. Proposal 15 of the report is unacceptable. It is possible to choose between a regulation and a directive as the legal form of a planned measure only when the relevant legal basis permits both forms. According to the principle of proportionality, the need for and the stringency of a measure are to be assessed in the light of its intended purpose. Consequently, directives should always take precedence when they are sufficient for the Community's purposes;

1.13. Every future legislative proposal at the Community level should be assessed using the following criteria:

(a) Is intervention absolutely necessary, or can self-regulation or other problem management or resolution mechanism be left to solve the problem or situation? (= need test, whether the state should act, in the sense of a justification for legislative action)

Is the justification based on a comparative law analysis of existing national provisions?

(b) If there is a need for action, what are the available options? (= how should the state act?)

- Applying the principle of subsidiarity, at which level should action be taken?

- Is there only one legislative act on which a solution can be modelled? Does the legislature have an informal procedure or can the persons concerned adopt a measure on their own authority that could offer an alternative? Is there a need for improvements in the implementation of new acts?

- If legislation is necessary: must it be a regulation, or will a directive suffice?

- Is there a need for immediate action? Can the measure be applicable for a limited period? Is that period appropriate? Should the act be reviewed after an appropriate period?

(c) The costs and benefits of the planned measure for the state and the persons concerned should then be assessed (cost- benefit analysis). Do the results of the analysis justify the planned measure even when the costs exceed the benefits? Apart from direct economic benefit, the analysis should also take account of other factors, in particular the implications for ecologically sustainable development and social justice;

(d) Finally, there must be an assessment, based on the preceding steps in the test process, of whether the proposal should progress to become draft legislation, or whether that would not be justified;

1.14. The prime objective of simplification and of better law-making is to boost employment and job creation by increasing profitability and competitiveness, especially for SMEs, which could come about from a clear, concise, comprehensible, consolidated and a realistically durable EU legal framework; it should seek to create a stable environment for investment and growth, ensuring uniform implementation and enforcement that would contribute to the completion of the Single Market.

1.15. Although important, simplification and better law making are not the biggest problems facing employment, profitability and competitiveness in Europe;

1.16. Any definition of simplification, and better law making, that involves the concept of deregulation, or the view that the best law is the one that is abolished should be rejected; but believes that too much red tape is strangling small and medium sized enterprise and job creation;

1.17. Regulatory burdens are felt more heavily by SMEs than by large firms and are therefore anti-competitive;

1.18. The Commission is warned that its welcome commitment to subsidiarity and proportionality for simplification, and better law making, must not allow national protectionism to undermine the Single Market;

1.19. The Commission's and Council's commitment to the consolidation of European legislation, and to better law making in 1996, is welcomed;

1.20. The Commission is therefore called on to be more vigilant and step up its monitoring of Member States' implementation of European legislation, and not to hesitate to use the powers granted to it under Article 171 of the EC Treaty if such cases should arise;

1.21. Its President is asked to ensure that the 'modus vivendi¨ under the codecision procedure operates effectively and committee chairmen are called upon to take their responsibilities seriously to monitor the exercise of the Commission's executive powers;

1.22. The EP should have the power to amend or veto legislative proposals drawn up by the Commission under the 'comitology' arrangements where the relevant Committee has 'failed to procure an opinion within the time limit laid down by its Chairman';

1.23. It is once again acknowledged that the European Union is currently conducting the greatest simplification campaign in modern economic history by endeavouring to replace 15 sets of rules and regulations with 1;

1.24. The Commission is invited to consider what future role the European Environment Agency can play in terms of implementation and enforcement and to apply Articles 169 and 171 consistently to ensure equal implementation and enforcement of EU law in all Member States;

2. Adopts the following position on the statements on specific sectors made in the report by the group of independent experts:

2.1. The proposals in the area of the employment law aimed at reducing the level of protection available to workers at European level are unacceptable, in particular those condemned by the Commission in its critical comments; this is particularly true of regulations in the matter of hygiene and safety, areas where a reduction in the level of protection is unacceptable;

2.2. Deregulation in EU provisions in the area of labour law will not necessarily improve the competitiveness of European industry, since other factors also have a significant impact on competitiveness, but will undermine good relations between management and labour and put the health and safety of workers at risk;

2.3. It is extremely important for competitiveness and employment and for the cohesion of the Member States that labour legislation be subject to harmonized minimum standards, as emphasized by both UNICE and the ETUC; the Commission should therefore consider whether there are more social issues which should be covered by Community legislation;

2.4. The proposals for deregulation of social aspects cannot be accepted: their effect would be to encourage 'social dumping' within the European Union, as well as to reduce the level of protection available to workers;

2.5. The Commission is called on to analyze why EC directives are not implemented; in its White Paper on Social Policy, the Commission points to the problem of implementation in the social sector, primarily in regard to health and safety at work; few decisions have been taken to improve implementation; the Commission's attention is drawn to its duty as guardian of the treaties and an improvement is called for in implementation through the application of Article 171, where necessary; an analysis of the differences in implementation in the Member States is also called for;

2.6. The Commission should propose new legislation with an appropriate level of detail to make effective the improvement and encouragement of Health and Safety practice and legislation in accordance with Article 118a of the EC Treaty and existing legislation;

2.7. The Commission should explain how controls on implemented legislation are made in the Member States (with regard to labour market and working conditions) and how these controls can be harmonized and supported by means of Community action;

2.8. The Commission is urged to introduce fundamental social rights for workers, to apply to all workers regardless of their form of employment; those rights should be directly applicable in the Member States but it should be entirely possible to supplement them with EC legislation if necessary; those rights must also be clear and unambiguous;

2.9. The provisions of labour law and those governing health and safety at work must not be impaired, and need to be made more transparent for those concerned. The report's contention (which reflects the opinion of the majority of the Group of Experts) that deregulation in this area will improve competitiveness and employment, is totally unsubstantiated;

2.10. Small and medium-sized enterprises, and not large-scale enterprises, are the main job creators in the Single European Market and it is regrettable that the SME sector was not more strongly represented in the membership of the Group of Experts;

2.11. The Commission is called on to go to great lengths to ensure that the SME sector is fully involved in the process of permanent consultation;

2.12. The Commission is called on, with the full involvement of the Social Partners, to investigate the possibilities of a differentiated and de minimus approach to SME's and legislation, a specific impact assessment procedure for SME's, and a SME-impact test for all legislation;

2.13. The substantive recommendations set out in the report of the Group of Experts should be rejected in their current form, because they are too facile and seek to revise environmental policy in a manner incompatible with the principles laid down in Articles 130r to 130t of the EC Treaty, particularly in their rejection of binding environmental provisions at European level;

2.14. The proposed deregulation measures fly in the face of the requisite harmonization of environmental provisions;

2.15. There can be no question of lowering environmental, public health or consumer protection standards and that the precautionary principle must be maintained and used as a basic principle of EU environmental legislation;

2.16. The report's assertion that past EU environmental policy was 'inefficient and ineffective' is rejected; it has in fact played a major role in cleaning up Europe's environment;

2.17. The continuing importance of regulations as a means of influencing behaviour in an environmentally sound direction is emphasized;

2.18. The Commission is reminded that the introduction of standards based on a 'profitability' principle could very easily clash with the EU's precautionary principle concerning the environment;

2.19. Considers, with the Commission, that proposal 12 on the 'Wastes' Directive would have the effect of dismantling the existing level of environmental protection and encouraging uncontrolled transfers of wastes;

3. Instructs its President to forward this resolutionto the Council, the Commission and the governments of the Member States.