EU announces shift in approach to law-making
By Honor Mahony
The European Commission on Tuesday (14 November) announced a "paradigm shift" in its approach to law-making cutting itself off from the notion that more laws mean more Europe.
The strategy aims to slash member states' administrative burden by 25 percent, something the commission estimates will eventually represent a saving the equivalent of 1.5 percent of the bloc's GDP - or around €150 billion.
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This "marks the coming of age of better regulation in the European Commission", said the institution's chief Jose Manuel Barroso.
He added that the commission would now be about delivering "necessary" and "high-quality" regulation.
Outlining some of the problems that businesses face, particularly SMEs, his colleague Guenter Verheugen, who has the day-to-day running of the strategy, said that alone "information requirements" such as filling out EU forms cost the bloc's economy around €350 billion a year.
He noted that sometimes firms are required to fill out forms for EU laws that do not even exist any longer.
Slow change in official thinking
The measures to cut red tape include setting up an impact assessment board, answering to Mr Barroso, to check that laws do not create more problems than they solve.
There will also be simplification initiatives and reviews, while much of paper work will now be done electronically.
But the process is expected to be tough as it requires a complete change in commission thinking - traditionally associated with churning out laws.
There is a "way of thinking that the more regulations you have, the more Europe you have," said Mr Verheugen who recently ruffled bureaucratic feathers by criticising his civil servants in the commission for holding up the commission's drive to cut down on laws.
Mr Barroso also admitted that progress to date on the headline goal of scrapping or simplifying 54 laws this year has been "slower than expected."
Of the 54 laws, just 15 have been dealt with, while 24 are pending adoption by the end of this year - they include laws in construction, the environment and accounting.
New initiatives include making farmers' lives easier by reducing the administration around agriculture and making better more up-to-date labelling for children's toys.
However, Mr Verheugen, who was at pains to underline the high quality of his civil servants, indicated that they were so incensed by his previous remarks that they now want to prove him wrong and were working hard on the red-tape-cutting initiative.
The proposals will be discussed at an EU leaders summit in March with Mr Barroso underlining several times that member states "are the drivers for more bureaucracy" and that he hopes they will give the initiative high political support.