The Commission inaugurated a project on law simplification and efficiency

Precise number of the Union legislation, so-called acquis, is difficult to comprehend; the EU source of the EU legislation in force as to the mid-2010 refer to about 17,5 thousand legislative acts. Therefore, the need for legal simplification is both urgent and complicated.

See: http://europa.eu/legislation_summaries/index_en.htm, as well as EU's official web site on access to European Union Law: http://eur-lex.europa.eu/index.htm.

Good intentions vs. good ends

In the beginning of October 2010, the European Commission has set out plans to improve the quality and importance of the EU legislation (8 October 2010). It intends, among other things, to evaluate the impact of legislation during the whole policy cycle: starting from a policy design and regulation's introduction up to the moment of laws' revision and amendments.

The Commission will implement the project in close coordination with the European Parliament, Council of Ministers and the EU-27 countries to encourage the member states to apply "smart regulation" in their legislative process.

Finally, as soon as the public involvement has become a strong point in policy design, the Commission will strengthen the voice of citizens and other stakeholders by increasing the period of public consultations along the legislative process from 8 to 12 weeks. The initiative will be materialize from 2012 onwards, according to Commission's communication.

The text of the Commission's communication on:

http://ec.europa.eu/governance/better_regulation/documents/com_2010_0543_en.pdf

Personal responsibility

Commission's President took the initiative both seriously and personal. The importance of the legislation reform, argued the President, lies in the fact that “smart regulation” should ensure that European laws benefit people and businesses. The financial and economic crisis has shown that regulations have an important role to play; therefore, they must be well designed to reach the intended objectives and to deliver sustainable prosperity and consumer protection without strangling economic operators, in particular the SMEs. “The recent proposals, he said, were essential if we are to deliver the ambitious objectives for smart, sustainable and inclusive growth set out by the Europe 2020 Strategy. A key part of getting legislation right is listening to the people who will be affected by it. For that reason we are strengthening the voice of citizens and other stakeholders even further and will increase our public consultation period from 8 to 12 weeks."

President of the European Commission, Jose Manuel Barroso (Brussels, 8 October 2010).

See: http://ec.europa.eu/governance/better_regulation/index_en.htm

Three main areas for deliberations

The Communication on smart regulations in the EU sets out action in three areas to achieve highest quality regulation, in full respect with the EU law's principles, e.g. conferral, subsidiarity and proportionality.

•  First, impact assessment; the Commission will target the whole policy cycle by attaching more importance to the evaluation of existing legislation and policies . The resulting evidence will be put at the heart of the design of new and revised regulation, alongside with impact assessments. Impact assessments will continue to be carried out for all major legislative initiatives to provide evidence and transparency on all the benefits and costs of the policy choices available for political decision-making. The Commission will also include its existing actions to simplify legislation and reduce administrative burdens within its systematic review of existing legislation to ensure maximum impact of these activities.

•  Second, shared responsibility of all those involved in the EU policy-making, i.e. the European Parliament, the Council, the member states and other institutions and bodies/agencies. The Commission will continue to work with all these actors to ensure that all actively pursue the smart regulation agenda. It will also strengthen its work on the implementation side of policies by making legislation clearer and more accessible, and will work with Member States, for strict enforcement of it. The Commission calls on Parliament and Council to make further progress on their commitment to do influence assessments on substantive amendments of its proposals.

•  Third, democratic integrity, e.g. the voice of citizens and stakeholders will be further strengthened by prolonging the consultation period from 8 to 12 weeks (starting from 2012 onwards). In 2011, the Commission will carry out a review of the Union's economic policy through extensive consultation process and by increasing predictability of the Commission's planned proposals. At the same time, ex-post evaluation work would allow stakeholders to take part in the policy framework (and their engagement) at a much earlier stage.

With this in mind, the Commission already in 2009 approved the Report on Subsidiarity and Proportionality, so-called 17th Report on Better Lawmaking. The report provides a background information on the principles, and presents examples of key cases where subsidiarity concerns were raised. It demonstrates the broad variety of opinions held by the different actors – the Commission, the European Parliament, the Council, the Committee of the Regions, the Economic and Social Committee and the member states' parliaments.

The Commission expects to make a first report on progress on the smart regulation agenda in the second half of 2012.

Impact assessment in policymaking

Under its better regulation agenda, the Commission already achieved a significant change in the manner it makes policy guidelines and drafts legislation. It has increased transparency and accountability and promoted so-called “evidence-based policymaking”.

Impact assessments accompany all legislative initiatives with major impacts and an independent Impact Assessment Board controls their quality. Foe example, by the end of August 2010, the Commission had carried out 520 impact assessments.

A recent Special Report of the European Court of Auditors "Impact Assessment in the EU Institutions: do they support decision making?" (Brussels, 28 September 2010) recognised that this system which has an unrivalled scope among existing ones, is considered to be good practice within the EU and is supporting decision-making within the EU institutions.

See additional information on governance in:

http://ec.europa.eu/governance/impact/key_docs/key_docs_en.htm

Impact assessments and audit

The purpose of the Commission's Impact Assessment (IA) system is to provide evidence for political decision-making and to ensure that all relevant policy options are considered when addressing any given problem. Impact Assessment reports are published alongside major proposals to explain the justification and evidence-base behind them. The system has been progressively extended and now covers all initiatives whose impacts are expected to be significant.

All IA reports receive now an independent quality check by the Impact Assessment Board (IAB). Across the world, only a few national IA systems have the same level of ambition and scope as the Commission's system.

All Commission impact assessments together with the opinion of the IAB are publicly available. The European Court of Auditors decided to audit the Commission's impact assessment system in mid-2008. It analysed whether impact assessments support decision-making in the EU institutions. Since the audit process began in June 2008, the Court has examined more than 100 Commission Impact Assessments produced from 2003-2008, and interviewed around 190 people.

An advisory panel and a group of leading international experts in better regulation assisted the Court in making IA.

The report of the European Court of Auditors can be accessed at

http://ec.europa.eu/governance/impact/key_docs/key_docs_en.htm

The Commission President's website:

http://ec.europa.eu/commission_2010-2014/president/index_en.htm 

Further information about Impact Assessment in the Commission:

http://ec.europa.eu/governance/impact/index_en.htm 

“Roadmaps”, which outline Impact Assessment plans or draft findings for forthcoming initiatives are available at:

http://ec.europa.eu/governance/impact/planned_ia/roadmaps_2010_en.htm

Impact assessments are implied to improve the Commission's policy-making; hence, the Commission welcomed a report by the European Court of Auditors on the Commission's Impact Assessment system.

The report confirms that the system is of real value to EU decision-makers, is effective in raising the quality of proposals and represents international best practice in terms of transparency and its integrated approach. The audit shows that the Commission has the right structures in place to deliver on its smart regulation agenda. The European Court of Auditors has confirmed that the Commission's impact assessment system has been effective in supporting decision-making within the EU institutions. Moreover, the Court particularly underlined that the independent quality control body, which the Commission has introduced, i.e. the Impact Assessment Board, has been recognised as raising the quality of analysis.

The “European audit” by the Court makes a valuable contribution to the debate about smart regulation and intends to help the EU institutions and the member states in progress on this shared agenda. First of all, the Commission will continue to improve the impact assessment system through the recommendations of the Court and will continue to work with Parliament and Council to help them to deliver on their commitments.

In the European Court of Auditors' publication on the results of its comprehensive audit of the Commission's Impact Assessment system (28 September 2010) it was underlined that almost all experts who surveyed “better regulation system” (about 85 per cent) agreed that the Commission's Impact Assessment system is effectively leading to better regulation.

The Court's independent experts found that the Commission's system represents EU and international best practice in terms of its transparency and its comprehensiveness, with integrated analysis of economic, environmental and social impacts.

By the end of August 2010, the Commission had carried out 520 impact assessments. The Commission plans to improve its impact assessment system further. An important step has already been taken towards even greater transparency with the publication of “roadmaps” for all policy initiatives with significant impacts, outlining what analysis has already been done and what is planned.

The Commission also intends to make progress on other smart regulation activities, looking beyond impact assessment of upcoming legislation to evaluations designed to improve existing legal acts.

Commission's simplification programme

The Action Programme for reducing administrative burdens is on track in the Commission with the aim of cutting red tape by 25 per cent by 2012. The Commission's proposals would generate annual savings of € 38 bln for European companies, thereby reducing administrative burden by 31 per cent.

The European Parliament and Council recently approved a proposal on value-added tax which will bring about € 18,4 bln of these savings and are discussing another proposal to allow over 5 million micro-enterprises to be exempted from EU accounting rules.

It is expected that by the end of 2010, altogether around 200 simplification proposals will have been adopted.

The Commission extended the mandate of the High Level Group of Independent Stakeholders, chaired by Edmund Stoiber, until the end of 2012.

Both the inter-institutional agreement on a better law-making and the inter-institutional common approach to impact assessment set out how the European Commission, the European Parliament and the European Council collaborate in this area. Commission and Member States experts collaborate and share views through the Group of High-Level National Regulatory Experts.

More information: http://ec.europa.eu/governance/better_regulation/index_en.htm

Better application of the Union law

Since 1984, the European Commission makes its annual reports on monitoring the application of European Union laws; in October, the Commission has monitored full and correct application of EU law for 2009.

The general Commission's outcome is that implementation of Union laws becomes better with each passing year. However, one main challenge remains, i.e. the late transposition of directives by the EU member states. Efforts to further increase the level of transposition, in partnership with the Member States, and that of preventing transposition problems have increased.

 

In 2007, in its Communication (“A Europe of Result – Applying Community Law” COM, 2007- 502) , the Commission announced it would give the annual report a new, forward looking focusing on strategic issues, on evaluation of the current state of the law as well as on priorities and programming for future work.

The European Union “manages” around 8000 legal acts in force in the EU-27 Member States. Challenges are inevitably many and varied, the infringement process playing an essential role in guaranteeing the correct application of European Union Law.

The present report confirms the high percentage of issues resolved without need for recourse to the European Court of Justice (about 95% of complaints are closed before a ruling of the ECJ).

At the end of 2009, the Commission was handling around 2900 complaints and infringement files, 16% less than in 2008 and 26% decrease in proceedings for failure to notify measures transposing directives.

The number of infringement cases based on complaints decreased by 15% compared to the previous year. The sectors, which have the most significant caseload, continue to be environment, taxation, energy, transport and internal market.

Priority areas of action

The report identifies the progress made over the last year on the implementation, management and enforcement of EU Law in the following spheres:

= Late transposition and preventive measures: Despite some improvement registered this year, late transposition continues to constitute a widespread, systematic problem affecting EU enterprises and citizens. The Commission encourages increased cooperation with member states on preventive measures to ensure better and timely implementation and application of the Union law.

= Correlation tables: Correlation tables contribute to transparency and improve access to European law. They improve the cooperation between the Commission and the member states when reviewing transposition, allowing early identification of issues and dialogue in order to avoid later on more fixed problems. The Commission will continue to seek support from all EU institutions for the comprehensive provision of these tables.

= Expert Groups: The Commission underlined the groups' importance in managing the application of EU law. Examples were given, which confirm the great variety and volume of work devoted to maximizing the benefits of the EU legislation.

= Citizens and complaints' registration: Horizontal instruments such as SOLVIT and EU Pilot continue to develop and give good results. SOLVIT increased the volume of files while maintaining a constantly high rate of success. EU Pilot allows for early resolution of transposition and/or application of law problems. Member States are actively contributing to the success of these instruments.

= Enforcement issues: Commission recognised that more attention is needed for assess the EU enforcement measures in the preparation of new legislation. These measures can be of horizontal application or designed for specific sectors. When EU Legislation contains enforcement measures, e.g. rights to appeal decisions, the Commission will work to ensure the full use of such measures, concentrating its efforts on their correct implementation and application.

= Infringement proceedings: The Commission updates and confirms the priority attached to the most timely and effective application of the law in the widest interest of the greatest number of citizens and enterprises.

= Reporting: EU legislation often includes an obligation for the Commission to produce a report on the early application of the legislative measure. The Commission stresses in the publication the value of these reports, based on the member states contributions, in order to increase attention for the evaluation of the EU law impact.

= The 27th Annual Report on Monitoring the Application of Community Law (2009) and the enclosed documents are available on the Commission's EUR-lex website.

= Statistics on recent transposition records of the EU-27 member states can be found at: http://ec.europa.eu/community_law/directives/directives_communication_en.htm 

Eugene ETERIS, European correspondent, October 2010