Opinion of the Economic and Social Committee on the 'Proposal for a European Parliament and Council Directive on the approximation of the laws of the Member States relating to machinery` (97/C 133/03)

On 14 February 1997 the Council decided to consult the Economic and Social Committee, under Article 100a of the Treaty establishing the European Community, on the above-mentioned proposal.

The Section for Industry, Commerce, Crafts and Services, which was responsible for preparing the Committee's work on the subject, adopted its opinion on 7 February 1997. The rapporteur was Mr Burkhard.

At its 343rd plenary session (meeting of 26 February 1997), the Committee adopted the following opinion by 90 votes to one with two abstentions.

1. Introduction

1.1. In the context of the plan for building a Europe which is 'close to its citizens`, the Commission thinks it is particularly important for Community legislation to be simple and clear and thus generally understandable. This aim is undermined by the need to adapt legal texts time and again to rapid developments on the ground.

1.2. The Commission therefore decided on 1 April 1987 to instruct its staff to consolidate or codify legal texts once they had been amended ten times or even earlier, if necessary. However, this should not involve any substantive changes to these texts.

1.3. The conclusions of the December 1992 European Council in Edinburgh stressed the importance of consolidating or codifying legal texts as it contributed to legal certainty.

1.4. The aim of the present proposal is to issue a new directive which codifies Directive 89/392/EEC and the three texts amending it, while fully preserving their substance.

2. Gist of the Commission text

2.1. The 79-page proposal starts by explaining the reasons for the codification exercise and then reprints word-for-word the text of Council Directive 89/392/EEC of 14 June 1989, incorporating at the appropriate places the provisions of the amending Council Directives 91/368/EEC of 20 July 1991, 93/44/EEC of 14 June 1993 and 93/68/EEC of 22 July 1993. This is followed by Annexes I-VII setting out the health and safety requirements and monitoring and labelling procedures. Two new Annexes, VIII and IX, indicate the correlations between Directive 89/392/EEC and the proposed directive.

2.2. The codification proposal is based on a consolidated version of Directive 89/392/EEC and its amending directives. This consolidated version was produced by the Office for Official Publications of the European Communities with the aid of the data processing system referred to in the Edinburgh European Council conclusions.

2.3. The codification proposal has preserved the substance of the codified legislation in full, and formal changes have been made only where necessary.

3. Suggestions

3.1. Since the legislation covered by the codification has been taken over as it stands - including mistakes (e.g. punctuation forgotten in the German version of Annex IV.A.9, which should read 'Pressen, einschliesslich Biegepressen, für ...`), the text should perhaps be revised for drafting errors.

3.2. There seems to be no point in retaining a provision which refers to Commission activities before 1 January 1994. It is therefore proposed that Article 13(2) be deleted. The correlation with Article 13(4) of Directive 89/392/EEC should also be corrected in Annex IX.

3.3. According to the second paragraph of Article 14, references to the repealed directives should be construed as references to this directive and be read in accordance with the correlation table in Annex IX. However, Annex IX only lists correlations with Directive 89/392/EEC and not with the other directives that have been repealed. It is therefore proposed that Annex IX also list correlations with Directives 91/368/EEC, 93/44/EEC and 93/68/EEC.

3.4. In the introductory sentences to Annex I, Annex V, Annex VI and Annex VII the references to Articles 1(2) should be expanded to indicate either subparagraph (a) or (b).

4. Conclusions

4.1. The Committee basically welcomes every effort by the Commission to consolidate or codify legislation which repeated amendments have made unclear. This will make Community legislation easier to understand and follow.

4.2. When the Committee originally discussed the legal texts now being codified, it endorsed them by a large majority. It also recommended that the texts be codified ().

4.3. Despite its rather high number of derogations the proposal, in approximating national legislation on machinery, guarantees that high safety standards will apply to machines and that machines can be freely traded and used if they comply with the directive's safety and health requirements.

5. The Committee therefore endorses the Commission proposal for a European Parliament and Council Directive on the approximation of the laws of the Member States relating to machinery in its present codified version.

Brussels, 26 February 1997.

The President of the Economic and Social Committee

Tom JENKINS

() Opinion of 26. 5. 1992 on COM(91) 547 final - OJ No C 223, 31. 8. 1992.