Interim Report from the Commission to the Stockholm European Council - Improving and simplifying the regulatory environment
Date: 2001-03-07
Institutions: European Commission
Subjects: EU law, administrative formalities, national law, report

COMMISSION OF THE EUROPEAN COMMUNITIES

Brussels, 7.3.2001
COM (2001) 130 final

INTERIM REPORT FROM THE COMMISSION TO THE STOCKHOLM
EUROPEAN COUNCIL

IMPROVING AND SIMPLIFYING THE REGULATORY ENVIRONMENT

IMPROVING AND SIMPLIFYING THE REGULATORY ENVIRONMENT

I.

BACKGROUND AND AIM

A new strategy
to simplify the
regulatory
environment

The aim of this interim report is to give the Commission's initial response to the
request formulated by the Lisbon European Council, and addressed to the Community
institutions and to the Member States, to "set out by 2001 a strategy for further
coordinated action to simplify the regulatory environment,
including the
performance of public administration, at both national and Community level".

A key
contribution
to the Lisbon
process

As the Commission's Communication for the Stockholm European Council points
out1, individuals and businesses, and small and medium-sized businesses in particular,
need a clear, effective and practical regulatory environment on what is a rapidly
changing world market. This is essential if the European Union is to become "the most
competitive and dynamic knowledge-based economy in the world, capable of
sustainable economic growth with more and better jobs and greater social cohesion".

Formulating a regulatory strategy fits well into the wider issue of how the European
Union should operate.

In its contribution to the debate, the Commission intends to proceed in three distinct
stages:

(1)

(2)

(3)

A three step
process

the present interim report, which takes stock of the situation and sets out the
Commission's initial thoughts on putting the Lisbon mandate into practice;

the adoption, next July, of the White Paper on European governance;

the presentation, by the end of the year, of a detailed action plan for
improving and simplifying the regulatory environment.

The Commission will also be guided by the conclusions of the report drawn up by the
high-level advisory group set up by the Member States' civil service ministries in
November 2000.

II.

ANALYSIS AND FINDINGS

Earlier action at Community level

Progress has
already been
made

The principles underlying the work of simplifying and improving the quality of
regulatory work have already been addressed by various Community-level rules and
guidelines2.

1

2

Commission Communication "Realising the European Union's potential: consolidating and
extending the Lisbon strategy" - COM(2001) 79 final.
Protocol on the application of
subsidiarity and proportionality,
the principles of
Interinstitutional agreements on the accelerated procedure relating to the official consolidation
of legislative texts, of 20 December 1994, and on common guidelines for the quality of

2

In addition to this, the Community has launched a number of initiatives in this field
since 1985.

Examples of measures taken in the past

• "New approach" directives designed to harmonise rules by focusing on the
essential requirements and leaving companies considerable leeway as to how they
meet them (sheet I).

• The option of negotiating agreements between the social partners in the social
policy field: once adopted by the Council, these agreements offer an alternative to
legislation (sheet II).

• Introduction of voluntary systems and measures (e.g. eco-labelling; environmental
audits; codes of conduct in air transport or consumer protection; agreements to
reduce CO² emissions etc) and the use of framework regulations to set precise
targets for a specific sector and entrust their implementation to interested parties,
more especially way of agreements (sheet III).

• Moves to simplify existing legislation, with special reference to the internal market
(e.g. SLIM – sheet IV) and reforms under the common agricultural policy,
resulting in a decrease in the number of regulations and a reduction in the
administrative burden for operators (sheet V).

• Introduction of business impact evaluation, based on consultation and economic

analysis instruments, and on a Business Test Panel pilot project.

• Creation of a business environment simplification task force (BEST) (sheet VI);
concerning

consultation
on-line
telecommunications); business feedback mechanism.

proposals

(Internet)

certain

(e.g.

on

But more
needs to be
done

These efforts have not always produced the expected results. They have never fed into
an overall approach; nor have they addressed the legislative cycle as a whole.

In principle, the adoption of European-level legislation has an important simplifying
role, since it creates a single set of rules rather than 15 national ones, but the European
Union's regulatory work still tends to attract criticism.

The main points of criticism
• The preparatory phase is often regarded as insufficient, particularly as regards
analysis of the impact the proposed measures will have on economic operators
and other
for a more in-depth, systematic
consultation process which should look particularly closely at whether a
regulatory solution is really needed.

interested parties. There is call

• The volume and accumulation of Community legislation. The volume is
legislation, on the other hand,

actually quite modest3. The accumulation of

3

drafting of Community legislation, of 22 December 1998, and various declarations appended
to the Community treaties.
Current rules and regulations account for some 70 000 pages in the Official Journal. The
statistics also show that the number of proposed legal measures has declined significantly over
recent years (250 proposals for new legislation presented by the Commission in 1990-94,
compared with 96 in 1995-99).

3

sometimes makes it difficult, in certain areas, and after 50 years of activity, to
understand what is current and how it is put into practice.

• The complexity, due to various factors:

– the tendency to have too much detail in the basic acts;

– the result of sometimes difficult textual compromises as a result of negotiations

within the European Parliament and the Council;

– the fact that Community legislation is often fleshed out by national implementing

provisions.

• The length of the legislative process. It takes on average 20 or so months for a
legislative instrument to be adopted. A further 18 to 24 months can elapse before
directives have been transposed by the Member States. It is difficult to reconcile
such lengthy periods with the speed with which markets and technologies are
changing.

• The transposition and implementation of directives in the Member States are a
to mention

source of additional complexities, divergences and delays, not
straightforward non-transposition.

• The application and verification of Community law within national systems often
require measures which can have a differing impact on economic and social
operators.

• Information on the current status of the law is not always easily accessible for

interested parties.

• The adaptation and consolidation of legislation. The Commission's efforts to
update the Community's corpus of regulation, be it by consolidation (compilation
for information), codification or the recasting of legislative instruments (binding
replacement texts), have not always been an unqualified success.

The rapid
pace of
change
requires
faster,
flexible
regulation

The report produced by the high-level group chaired by Mr Alexandre Lamfalussy on
the regulation of European financial markets takes up a number of these points of
criticism, more particularly the slowness and the rigidity of the current regulatory
system, and the ambiguities it produces. In particular, the report stresses that there is
an imbalance between the Commission’s aspirations and the legislative and regulatory
instruments available to the European Union to cope with the rapid change on
financial markets. It advocates closer linkage between primary legislation and the
implementing provisions. The report also recommends strong political commitment to
a more flexible approach to financial regulation, bearing in mind the role of the
various Community institutions.

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III.

THE MAIN ASPECTS OF A REGULATORY STRATEGY

A new coordinated initiative

New political
commitment
is now needed

Having a policy of simplifying and improving the quality of regulatory work is not just
one option among many, but an imperative, following on logically from the success
story of European integration and becoming, increasingly, a basic condition for the
legitimacy of Community action.

The Commission has a special responsibility in the process of drawing up Community
instruments, since it holds the right of initiative4. The success of its efforts to simplify
and improve the regulatory environment depends, though, on the involvement and
active commitment of all the players throughout the "legislative chain",
the
Community institutions and the Member States. Hence the need for coordinated
action.

i.e.

An overall strategy within a clearly defined framework

The European Union needs an overall strategy addressing all the aspects of improving
and simplifying the regulatory environment, and embracing the whole life cycle of a
Community act, from its preparation right up to its application and, if necessary, any
requisite changes.

A global
strategy to
improve each
phase of the
legislative
process

The main principles of a regulatory strategy

• legislative action only where necessary

• broad consultations and impact analysis before any proposal

• choose the appropriate instrument

• speed up the legislative process

• ensure rapid and correct transposition and effective application

• evaluate the effects of the legislation

• speed up the simplification and codification of existing texts

This strategy will have to be developed within the European Union's institutional
framework. The Treaties offer opportunities and impose constraints at the same time.
They lay down objectives, say who does what, and what the procedures and principles
are, all of these being incumbent on the institutions and on the Member States.

The aim is
better
regulation, not
deregulation

The Commission sees the drive to improve and simplify the regulatory environment as
not just a synonym for "deregulation". The Commission intends to continue to make
full use of Treaty's instruments and to play its driving role, having regard to the
powers available to it. The new challenges – be they food safety or the creation of an

4

The new regulatory strategy we are discussing here should also apply to the right of initiative
available to the Member States under Title IV of the EC Treaty.

5

area of security, freedom and justice – require an appropriate legislative response from
the European Union. This is not incompatible with the desire to simplify the regulatory
environment or with the search for new approaches which are complementary to the
instruments laid down by the Treaties.

When is it appropriate to regulate at European level?

The first
question – is
EU regulation
needed

One question that has to be answered before any regulatory work is undertaken is
is really necessary. Do we need the legislation? Are there possible
whether it
alternatives?

Simply pointing to the European dimension or to the scale of a problem is not enough
to justify the need for Community regulatory action. The Commission's right of
initiative includes the right to decide not to legislate, even where it is under pressure to
do so from other institutions, the Member States, interested parties or civil society.

Of all the Commission's proposals:

Legislative pressure

• between 20 and 25% are a follow-up to Council or European Parliament
resolutions or to requests on the part of the social partners or economic operators.

• around 30% arise from international obligations on the part of the Community.

• between 10 and 15% have to do with obligations under the treaty or secondary

legislation.

• around 20% are for updating existing Community legislation (e.g. adapting it to

technical or scientific progress)

The primary consideration,
then, should be whether Community action is the
appropriate way to tackle a given problem. In deciding this, the Commission will take
a closer look at the principles of subsidiarity and proportionality. It will also continue
its practice of producing consultation documents and collecting and analysing the
feedback. This approach will be backed by greater rigour on the part of the
Commission in programming its legislative initiatives. Finally, the White Paper on
governance will feed into the debate on what is the most appropriate level of decision-
taking.

Before embarking on any legislative action, the Commission must examine whether
such action is necessary to implement the Treaty's provisions.

Respecting
proportionality
and
subsidiarity

Examining
alternatives to
legislation

Once it has been decided to take action at Community level, the immediate concern is
what arrangements and instruments are most appropriate. There are various alternative
or complementary solutions to legislation, involving the various interested parties.
Lisbon's open coordination method created an extra instrument for sharing experience
and comparing progress. Voluntary measures, such as self-regulation, may also be
appropriate.

6

Alternative and complementary approaches

• Self-regulation. This is voluntary, and is based on cooperation between all
interested parties, where appropriate incorporating Community rules governing the
agreements between the parties. Where there is no need for binding rules, the
Commission encourages the use of voluntary arrangements (sheet III).

• Co-regulation. This combines the advantages of legislation – more especially its
predictable and binding nature – with the more flexible approach under self-
regulation. Co-regulation has already been used in various fields, more
particularly:

– the "new approach", where the essential

requirements are laid down in a
framework directive, leaving business and industry to decide for themselves how to
meet their obligations (sheet I);

– the possibility, introduced by the Maastricht Treaty, of using agreements between
the social partners (on their own initiative or after consultation by the Commission)
as an alternative method of regulation in fields concerned with working conditions
and access to work (sheet II).

Choosing the
right
instruments

The choice and, where appropriate, combination of these instruments has to be done
on a case-by-case basis, incorporating a degree of flexibility, and having analysed
what looks like being the best way of meeting the specified objective. This should be
done without jeopardising either democratic control of the legislative process or the
rules of the Treaty, particularly the competition rules. Alternative solutions can only
be considered in appropriate cases.

Regulatory action as such provides monitoring instruments and guarantees legal
certainty and respect for the general interest. It follows that regulation should be the
preferred option where mechanisms like co-regulation or self-regulation have either
failed or have been shown to be insufficient. On the other hand, legislation must be the
option in the cases provided for by the Treaties. Generally speaking, where the point is
to spell out policy objectives and where implementation has to be uniform across the
board, there can be no question of using different approaches or voluntary agreements.

Quality and simplification

Where it has been decided to opt for legislation, the constant concern, throughout the
life cycle of a legal instrument, must be quality and simplification.

3 Better preparation and prior consultation

• Impact assessment must be comprehensive, objective and transparent.
Prior consultation of interested parties should be extended and made more
in-depth, although this does not necessarily mean speeding up the
legislation. More particularly, it should cover:

– more involvement on the part of civil society, drawing especially on
positive experience of on-line consultation via the Internet. Such

7

Improving
consultation

Better
preparation
and impact
assessement

A new focus on
the choice of
instrument

consultation might relate to the appropriateness of a particular initiative
and its form. The Commission will be presenting a communication on
relations with civil society in June 2001. It is currently examining, together
with the Economic and Social Committee and the Committee of the
Regions, the possibility of conducting broader consultations with these
Committees in the phase leading up to presentation of an initiative, by way
of exploratory opinions in particular;

– qualitative and quantitative impact analysis based primarily on a feedback
mechanism: the existing procedures should be strengthened, developing
ongoing pilot projects where appropriate, and refining the economic
analysis instruments5.

• As regards preparation, the Commission will make every effort to put
forward the simplest possible instruments, doing whatever it can to
strengthen the various internal provisions and procedures for improving
the quality of legislation.

3 Choice of instrument

• The Commission will undertake an in-depth and more systematic
examination of what instrument should be used to achieve different
objectives, in accordance with the Protocol on application of the principles
of subsidiarity and proportionality. However, in appropriate cases, and
more especially when it comes to the adoption of detailed technical norms
requiring uniform application in the Member States,
it will opt for
regulations, which have immediate and uniform effect, in preference to
to separately enact national
directives, which need 15 countries
transposing legislation. The Commission will give reasons for its choice.

• The Commission will take a periodic look at its timetable for legislative
work, and decide whether it reflects the broader concern for simpler and
effective legislative action.

3 The procedure for adopting legislative acts

Speeding up the
decision
making process

• The Commission will encourage the stricter application of qualified
majority voting for Council decisions, given that a protracted quest for
consensus tends to add to the adoption time frame and make the various
instruments more complicated and more ambiguous.

• Quicker legislative procedures will be sought by way of agreements
between the institutions, with a view to making more use, under the co-
decision procedure, of the possibility to wrap things up at first reading, and
of fast-tracking the examination of proposals from the Commission.

5

On-line consultation via the Internet and impact analysis by way of a feedback mechanism are
key elements in an initiative which the Commission is pursuing under its White Paper on
reform (the e-Commission scheme).

8

Taking
decisions at the
right level

Avoiding
unnecessary
complications

Better and
faster
implementation

• More use should be made of delegating to the Commission powers for
adopting implementing provisions for achieving the legislative act's
objectives. More use could then be made of simpler
framework
regulations, covering the act's essential elements. Such delegation would
transparency and
have to pay heed to the same principles
consultation) which govern the legislative process.

(e.g.

• The Commission will consider

for proposals at risk of
becoming obsolete, a "guillotine" clause, whereby the proposal will lapse
if it is not adopted within a given time frame.

introducing,

• The Commission will consider withdrawing its proposal if compromises
worked out in the Council or the European Parliament introduce a level of
legislative complexity which is incompatible with the principles of the
Treaty — and more especially with the principles of subsidiarity and
proportionality — or with the objectives of the proposal itself.

3 Transposition and application at national level

There must be consistency in the way Community legislation is put into practice. It is
up to:

• the Member States individually to ensure that Community acts are
their national
faithfully transposed within the set deadlines,
provisions are effectively applied and that "purely national" legislation is
simplified. When transposing directives into national law, the Member
States should systematically produce a concordance table, showing which
national measures are concerned with which parts of the Community
legislation;

that

• the Commission to propose, wherever possible, shorter deadlines for the
transposition of directives. The Commission will also have to carry out
more systematic and swifter checks and propose, wherever necessary,
ways of eliminating inconsistencies and avoiding any non-uniform
application of Community law.

There will have to be concertation procedures between the Member States and the
Commission to improve the way the rules are applied and to ensure that they can be
quickly adapted to commercial, technical or any other kind of change.

3 Evaluating the effects of Community legislation

• The Commission will carry out a regular appraisal of the results and
consequences of Community regulations, in conjunction with the national
administrations and the various economic and social players. This will
enable it to decide whether to propose that the action be continued, that the
act be amended, or that it be repealed.

• The Commission will improve information access arrangements so as to
make Community law more accessible, with special reference to access
using the new technologies.

Regular
evaluation and
reviews

9

• The Commission will introduce into each of its proposals concerned with
areas subject to rapid technological, organisational or market change a
deadline for re-examination of the act or a "sunset clause".

3 Simplifying existing legislation

The simplification and systematic updating of current legislation should ensure that
the current corpus of
legislation is always appropriate to its objectives. The
Commission intends to:

• rapidly assess any feedback indicating excessively complex and

unjustified situations;

• lay down a multi-annual plan for simplification action, updated regularly
and applying politically binding time scales as agreed by the various
institutions;

• propose an agreement between the institutions, with a view to laying
down the principles of simplification and entering into a political
commitment to speed up legislative work to this end;

• systematically introduce a simplification element in any periodic review of

directives or regulations currently in force;

• build on action already undertaken with regard to codifying, recasting and
consolidating existing instruments, and systematically and rapidly publish
the consolidated texts, for information purposes, whenever an amendment
is made. There is an urgent need here to finalise the inter-institutional
agreement on the recasting exercise.

A systematic
focus on
simplification

A change of
culture- a
shared
responsibilty

Developing a new administrative and regulatory culture

The planned new strategy should be accompanied by a profound change in
administrative and regulatory culture,
requiring action from the Community
institutions and the Member States.

In several Member States and, more generally speaking, within the OECD, great
efforts are being made to simplify legislation and decision-making procedures. Some
countries have set up specific structures for this purpose. For its part, the Commission
intends to use the existing structure within the Secretariat General and the existing
coordination mechanisms to set up a simplification and internal quality control
network, which could equally examine ways of sharing best practice.

IV.

CONCLUSION

The
Commission’s
first cotribution
to a global
strategy

This interim report is a first attempt to analyse the challenges facing the EU in
responding to the Lisbon mandate to simplify the regulatory environment, including
the performance of public administration, at Community level. The Commission, for
its part, will pursue and develop its work in this area. It will undertake more in-depth
reflection in the context of the White Paper on Governance, to be adopted in July
2001, before presenting its proposals for an overall strategy to the European Council
by the end of the year.

10

Action is also
needed at
national level

Effective action in this area also requires the full involvement of the European
the Council and the Member States. The mandate from the Lisbon
Parliament,
European Council also stresses the need for action at national level. The work of the
high-level advisory group set up by the Member States' civil service ministries will
hopefully make an important contribution in this regard.

11

ANNEXES

Sheet I

THE “NEW APPROACH” DIRECTIVES

The Council Resolution of 7 May 1985 introduced “a new approach to technical
harmonisation and standards”. Its aims were to establish a level playing field for the
freedom of movement of products on the internal market, while guaranteeing a high
level of protection. The legislative instrument proposed was a form of joint regulation
in which framework directives would set out
the
procedures for evaluating conformity and the introduction of the CE marking, while
business and industry would have the choice as to how they would comply with these
obligations. Within this framework, the European standards organisations have the
task of drafting technical specifications which would offer one way (amongst others)
of complying with the directives.

requirements,

the essential

The “new approach” directives apply to products to be placed (or put into service) on
the Community market for the first time. They accordingly apply to new products
manufactured in the Member States and to new, used and second-hand products
imported from third countries. Here are the main features of this type of internal
market legislation:

• legislative harmonisation is limited to the essential requirements to which the
products placed on the Community market must conform in order to benefit from
freedom of movement on the EC market;

• the technical specifications of the products reflecting the essential requirements, as

defined in the relevant directives, are established by harmonised standards;

• application of

remains voluntary and the
manufacturer can always apply other technical specifications to meet the essential
requirements;

the harmonised standards

• products manufactured in conformity with the harmonised standards are presumed

to conform with the essential requirements.

Since 1987, some 20 directives have been adopted by the Council and the European
Parliament,
instruments and pressure
equipment to machinery and toys.

their application ranging from medical

A Council Resolution of 28 October 1999 on “the role of harmonisation in Europe”
called on the Commission to systematically examine whether the new approach could
be applied to sectors not yet covered, in order to improve and simplify legislation.

12

Sheet II

AGREEMENTS BY THE SOCIAL PARTNERS

Since 1993 (Maastricht), the European social partners have been empowered to
negotiate agreements in order to regulate social policy matters governing working
conditions, such as:
• the working environment, in order to protect worker health and safety;

• working conditions;

• information and consultation of workers;

• integration of people excluded from the labour market, and equality for men and

women on the labour market and in terms of working conditions;

• social security and social protection.

The procedure, described in Articles 138 and 139 of the Treaty, focuses on three main
stages: firstly, the Commission initiates consultation of the European social partners,
in two phases, on the advisability and subsequently the content of an initiative;
secondly, the social partners are given nine months in which to negotiate; thirdly, the
Commission submits the negotiated agreement to the Council for it to be implemented
by way of a directive. The Council may adopt or reject the agreement.

Since the Maastricht Treaty came into force, five agreements, two of them sectoral,
have been drawn up, viz.
• agreement on parental leave;

• agreement on part-time work;

• agreement on fixed-term work;

• agreement on the organisation of working time for mobile workers in civil aviation;

• agreement concerning the organisation of the working time of seafarers.

An agreement on interim work is currently being negotiated at cross-industry level.

The whole procedure has generally taken less than two years on average, which is not
excessive compared with the time taken to draw up Community legislation in the
social field.

Creating Community provisions by way of agreements produces acts which meet the
needs of the social partners, which are better in terms of proportionality and
subsidiarity, and which make an effective contribution to the objectives of social
policy.

13

Sheet III

PARTICIPATION OF INTERESTED PARTIES

For some years,
interested parties from the public and private (NGO) sectors in various areas.

the Commission has encouraged the voluntary participation of

In the environmental sector, the Commission has proceeded:

either by a regulatory framework which elicits voluntary commitments:
• The regulation enabling the voluntary participation of organisations

in a
Community environmental management and audit system (EMAS) encourages the
voluntary support of industrialists for a system whose aim is to improve their
environmental performance.

• The Eco-label

consumer
organisations in drafting criteria for the Community ecological label awarded to
products which meet the essential requirements with regard to the environment.

regulation associates

industrialists, NGOs

and

or refraining from creating binding legislation and using recommendations to
encourage voluntary commitments by industrial sectors:
• Reducing CFCs — a voluntary commitment from the aerosols industry, the plastic

foam industry and the refrigeration industry.

• Code of good environmental practice in the detergents sector.

• Reduction of CO² emissions from private vehicles — voluntary commitments by
European, Japanese and Korean car manufacturing associations, associated with the
drafting of the AUTO-OIL programme on air quality.

• Granting an exemption under Article 81 of the Treaty for voluntary commitments
by manufacturers of washing machines, televisions and video recorders to reduce
energy consumption.

In the field of consumer health and protection, various codes of conduct and
voluntary agreements have been put forward. To take an example, consumer NGOs
and professional organisations in the sector have agreed on a code of conduct on
mortgage lending. This forms the basis for a Commission recommendation in this
area.

The E-confidence initiative, bringing in consumers and industrialists, was launched to
identify the principles for drafting codes of conduct in e-commerce and systems for
monitoring and evaluating these codes. EuroLogo Negotiation, a European code of
conduct signed in 1998 by consumer associations and professional associations, sets
out the rules for consumer information as regards the euro, awards a European
confidence logo and brings in Commission monitoring procedures.

14

Sheet IV

SLIM

The SLIM initiative (simpler legislation for the internal market) is one of the pilot
projects to simplify national and Community legislation relating to the internal market.

The SLIM method is based on three central ideas:

• a choice of specific working sectors (currently 14 sectors compared with four

initially in 1996);

• small working teams (chaired by the Commission with an equal number [4 or 5] of
representatives from the Member States and the industries concerned, and some
Commission officials with observer status);

• a limited period to identify the problems and put forward solutions on the basis of a

clear objective of simplification.

The SLIM recommendations concern existing legislation and may or may not be
endorsed by the Commission. The Commission has up to now, in line with the SLIM
recommendations, put forward legislative proposals for six sectors. The Council and
the European Parliament have adopted legislation for four of these sectors.

The SLIM teams have generated a demonstration effect and acted as laboratories for
the industries concerned and the
creating consensus among the Member States,
Commission. Unfortunately the overall impact remains small.

In 2000, the Commission reviewed the SLIM initiative and put forward a series of
recommendations to improve the methods and perhaps use a broader approach. Some
of the key recommendations stemming from this review are:

• the creation of a group of specialists for “better lawmaking”, working under the
supervision of the internal market advisory committee, and which would help to
steer SLIM;

• more transparency as regards the selection of the sectors and objectives, and
consultation of the Member States and the European Parliament on this matter;

• for the Commission, set an objective to put forward proposals within six months of

a SLIM report;

• for the Council and the European Parliament, devise mechanisms for ensuring that

simplification proposals are adopted swiftly;

• for the Member States, regularly inform the internal market advisory committee on

national simplification programmes.

The Council (May 2000) and the European Parliament, in their approval of the SLIM
review, stressed the need for transparency, consistency and coordination at national
and Community levels.

15

SIMPLIFICATION OF AGRICULTURAL LEGISLATION

Sheet V

Over recent years, the Commission has made simplification one of the guiding
principles of its work on the reform of the Common Agricultural Policy (CAP), and
has prioritised the following two objectives:

• to make agricultural legislation as clear, transparent and accessible as possible;

• to minimise the administrative burden the CAP places on farmers and other

interested parties, and on the national and Community authorities.

With a view to making agricultural legislation clearer and more accessible, the
Commission has taken the following steps:

Internal guidelines for departments responsible for producing agricultural legislation:
These guidelines are intended to make any new legislative proposal and any
amendment to existing legislation clear and simple.

Informal consolidation of agricultural legislation: Since 1999, the Commission has
been working on the informal consolidation of agricultural legislation in all the official
languages of the Community. In view of the frequent amendments to agricultural
legislation, the purpose of this is to make the legislation more accessible.

Reducing the number of regulations: The volume of legislative acts and administrative
acts has been reduced (e.g. a single Regulation for each common market organisation).

Trade mechanisms: Recent changes have made the regulations concerning trade
mechanisms clearer and simpler.

Under Agenda 2000, the reforms adopted for arable crops and rural development have
contributed to the simplification drive. Other reforms adopted or proposed more
recently in the wine, meat, flax and hemp sectors will also result
in simpler
agricultural legislation.

In addition to initiatives under the last reform of the CAP, the Commission has taken
other specific initiatives to simplify administrative procedures and reduce the
in terms of
administrative burden faced by farmers, particularly small farmers,
financial aid and funding; this is the “small farmers’ scheme”. More than 20% of the
EU’s farmers stand to benefit from this lightening of the administrative burden.

16

Sheet VI

BUSINESS IMPACT ASSESSMENTS AND SIMPLIFICATION OF
THE REGULATORY ENVIRONMENT FOR BUSINESS

The business impact assessments were designed to ensure that proposed Community
legislation does not entail excessive burdens on companies (particularly SMEs), to
interests when legislation is being
encourage better consideration of commercial
drafted, and to inform the Community institutions of the likely implications for
business and industry.

The business impact assessment system has since 1986 proved useful in assessing the
impact of legislation on companies. However, it has not always delivered what had
been expected of it,
it has produced merely a qualitative (rather than
quantitative) appraisal and has fed into the assessment process at too late a stage.

in that

The system for assessing the impact on EU companies is currently being re-examined.
In an endeavour to take stock and to strengthen the evaluation arrangements, including
systematic consultation of the stakeholders, the Commission has launched a pilot
project. It will accordingly carry out extensive evaluations on a sample of legislative
proposals which feature in the Commission’s work programme for 2001.

In response to a mandate from the Amsterdam European Council (1997), the
Commission started up a business environment simplification task force (BEST)
which comprises representatives of business and the public authorities in the Member
States. One aspect of BEST’s field of analysis and terms of reference was to point up
the options for improving legislation and removing unnecessary obstacles to the
development of European businesses in general and SMEs in particular. The task force
submitted its final report to the Commission in May 1998. On the basis of its
recommendations, the Council called on the Commission to prepare a timetable for
evaluating how European and national policies encourage entrepreneurship and
competitiveness. An action plan was accordingly presented by the Commission on
30 September 1998 and adopted by the Council on 29 April 1999.

One of BEST’s observations as regards the regulatory environment concerns the
improvement of public administration. Many Member States have introduced
initiatives (or are in the process of doing so) to improve the regulatory framework for
businesses, and have developed evaluation systems to gauge the business impact of
legislation, while some countries have introduced registers of all the obligations
businesses have to meet, and have set up simplification working groups,
interministerial committees and regulatory impact units.

The Commission — in close conjunction with the Member States — is required to
submit implementation reports on the BEST action plan as a whole.

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