Opinion of the European Economic and Social Committee on the Proposal for a Decision on a procedure for prior examination and consultation in respect of certain laws, regulations and administrative provisions concerning transport proposed in Member States COM(2006) 284 final — 2006/0099 (COD)
Date: 2006-10-26
Institutions: European Economic and Social Committee
Subjects: common transport policy, consultation procedure, inland waterway transport, rail transport, road transport

C 324/36

EN

Official Journal of the European Union

30.12.2006

Opinion of the European Economic and Social Committee on the Proposal for a Decision on a
procedure for prior examination and consultation in respect of certain laws, regulations and admin-
istrative provisions concerning transport proposed in Member States

COM(2006) 284 final — 2006/0099 (COD)

(2006/C 324/16)

On 23 June 2006 the Council decided to consult the European Economic and Social Committee, under
Article 157(3) of the Treaty establishing the European Community, on the abovementioned proposal.

On 4 July 2006, the Committee Bureau instructed the Section for Transport, Energy, Infrastructure and the
Information Society to prepare the Committee's work on the subject.

Given the urgent nature of the work, the European Economic and Social Committee appointed Mr Tóth as
rapporteur-general at its 430th plenary session, held on 26 October 2006 and adopted the following
opinion by 110 votes with 5 abstentions.

1. Introduction

2. General comments

2.1
The Committee is particularly concerned about recent
trends that alienate European citizens from the European idea
and more importantly from the European legislative and deci-
sion making process. The Committee's mission is to help bridge
the widening gap between Europe and organized civil society,
that is to say its citizens.

2.2
Clearly, as long as several provisions that have been
amended several times remain in fragmented form, so that they
have to be sought partly in the original instrument and partly
in the latter, amending one, the considerable research work will
prevent ordinary citizens and numerous civil society organiza-
tions to find easily the legal information they need.

2.3
Therefore the Committee fully endorses the current
proposal, in the particular hope that it will help all citizens and
civil society interest groups to get better and more precise infor-
mation concerning a given European legislative instrument.

The President

of the European Economic and Social Committee

Dimitris DIMITRIADIS

The proposed decision (1) aims to repeal the Council
1.1
Decision of 21 March 1962 (2) instituting a procedure for prior
examination and consultation in respect of certain laws, regula-
concerning transport
tions
proposed in Member States.

and administrative provisions

The purpose of the proposed decision is to codify the
1.2
fully
Council Decision of 21 March 1962, and hence it
preserves the content of the acts being codified and does no
more than bring them together with only such formal amend-
ments as are required by the codification exercise itself.

The current codification proposal

from the
1.3
Commission's decision of 1 April 1987 (3) in which it instructs
its staff to undertake the codification of all legislative acts after
no more than ten amendments in order to ensure that the Com-
munity rules are clear and readily understandable.

follows

Brussels, 26 October 2006

(1) COM(2006) 284 final.
(2) OJ 23 of 3.4.1962, p. 720-721.
(3) COM(87) 868 PV.