06 September 2007

Plenary Meeting 3-6 September

Better regulation in the EU - MEPs adopt four reports
The European Parliament adopted four reports for clearer and simpler EU regulation. MEPs call for full involvement of the Parliament, the Council and the Commission when laws are being drafted. It will also call for stakeholders such as NGOs to be consulted more widely as well as greater transparency in the overall process.

The first report strongly supports the process of Better Regulation with a view to strengthening the effectiveness, efficiency, coherence, accountability and transparency of EU law.

The House insists that, when presenting a legislative proposal, the Commission must avoid unclear and redundant expressions and preferably use plain and comprehensible language, whilst retaining terminological precision and legal certainty. The Parliament considers, in particular, that the practice of using incomprehensible acronyms and the over-abundance of needless recitals must be abandoned. The report encourages all levels of government to use, whenever possible, clear language that is easily understandable by citizens.

The report deplores Member States' practice of 'gold plating', and calls upon the Commission to investigate what further measures might be taken to prevent it, including the introduction of a right of direct action for citizens. The report calls for 'follow-up impact assessments' analysing how decisions are in fact implemented in Member States and at local level. MEPs support the increased use, where appropriate, of regulations.

The report accepts that the Council, like Parliament, must consider the impact of its major amendments upon the Commission's impact assessment. The House stresses the need for cost-benefit analyses that better reflect the complex regulatory cost structures when directives are implemented by way of national legislation and change the regulatory framework within which companies and individuals operate. The report strongly advocates transparency and independent scrutiny of the carrying-out of impact assessments.

The House agrees with the Commission that better lawmaking cannot be achieved without an overall picture of the economic, social, environmental, health and international impact of each legislative proposal. The report fully supports, therefore, the setting-up within the Commission of an Impact Assessment Board under the authority of the Commission's President in order to monitor the application of these principles in the drafting of impact assessments by the responsible staff of the Commission. The House stresses, nevertheless, that, in order to guarantee a minimum level of independent scrutiny in the drafting of impact assessments, an independent panel of experts should be set up to monitor, by means of spot checks, the quality of opinions delivered by the Impact Assessment Board, and that representatives of interested parties should also be allowed to assist in conducting them.

In a second own-initiative report on the application of the principles of subsidiarity and proportionality, the House considers that bad regulatory quality in the Member States and at Community level weakens the rule of law and alienates citizens from their institutions. The House stresses the importance of adequate and independent impact assessments, based on wide-ranging consultation of stakeholders.

The House calls on the Commission to provide a sufficient number of scenarios and policy options (including ‘do-nothing’ options if necessary) as a basis for cost-effective and sustainable solutions.

The report welcomes the Commission action programme to measure the administrative cost for undertakings in Europe and to reduce needless and disproportionate administrative burdens by 25% by 2012. The House notes that the strategy for a 25% reduction refers to needless administrative burdens for undertakings and cannot, therefore, be equated to a deregulation, nor lead to a change in the policy objectives and level of ambition contained in Community legislation. The report calls on the Commission to ensure that the reduction in needless administrative burdens arising from regulations should not be at the expense of the original objectives of the regulations concerned.

In this light, the Parliament supports the Commission proposal for the introduction of thresholds for all information requirements, limiting them for SMEs wherever possible.

MEPs call on the Member States to extend their efforts to reduce the burden resulting from purely national legislation.

In a third report MEPs welcome the fact that, for the first time, the simplification initiatives have been included in the Commission’s legislative and work programme for 2007, in confirmation of the political priority to be given to the simplification strategy.

The House calls on the Commission systematically to include from now on the simplification initiatives in a specific part of the legislative and work programme, to indicate therein what priority it intends to give to each individual simplification initiative and, to that end, to set out its simplification proposals already in its annual policy strategy at the start of the annual legislative programming process. The report calls on the Commission to avoid the proliferation of documents containing lists of simplification initiatives, in order to have as clear a reference framework as possible.

The report calls on the Commission to make every effort to ensure that the process being promoted at European level to simplify regulation and generally to improve its quality is not undermined at national level by internal rules or technical barriers. It calls on the Commission to guide and monitor this process also at national level, for instance by acting as a centre for collecting and disseminating the best practices developed within the European Union and its Member States and, not least, responding to indications from stakeholders.

Finally, MEPs stress that regular and thorough impact assessments play a key role in the simplification process and that such assessments should be considered by the Council and Parliament when amendments are made to a proposal during the legislative process.

The final an own-initiative report on the institutional and legal implications of the use of 'soft law' instruments considers that, in the context of the Community, soft law all too often constitutes an ambiguous and ineffective instrument which is liable to have a detrimental effect on Community legislation and institutional balance and should be used with caution, even where it is provided for in the Treaty.

The report recalls that so-called soft law cannot be a substitute for legal acts and instruments, which are available to ensure the continuity of the legislative process, especially in the field of culture and education.

MEPs call on the Commission to give special consideration to the effect of soft law on consumers and their possible means of redress before proposing any measure involving soft-law instruments.

The report considers the open method of coordination to be legally dubious, as it operates without sufficient parliamentary participation and judicial review. The House believes that it should therefore be employed only in exceptional cases and that it would be desirable to consider how Parliament might become involved in the procedure.

Better Regulation Rapporteur: Katalin Lévai
Better law-making 2005: subsidiarity and proportionality Rapporteur: Bert Doorn
Simplification of the regulatory environment Rapporteur: Giuseppe Gargani
Use of 'soft law' Rapporteur: Manuel Medina Ortega

Review of the EU consumer acquis
Members gave their support to a European Commission Green Paper which aims to give greater coherence to the 8 EU directives that currently cover consumer protection. The House voted to support a report drafted by Béatrice Patrie. Two issues raised in the debate were concerns raised over the standards of Chinese toys following recent recalls of products for safety reasons in the US.

Speaking in the debate, Liberal MEP Diana Wallis, from the Parliament's Legal Affairs Committee, stressed the importance of coherence in Consumer protection. In particular she addressed her remarks to the Meglena Kuneva - the European Commissioner responsible who also took part in the debate.

MEPs were also concerned about the protection afforded to consumers by online shopping - especially as this form of trade is increasingly making national borders irrelevant. Finnish member Alex Stubb of the centre right EPP-ED regaled his colleagues with his own experiences: 'I am a mega shopper - I love to shop on the internet'. However, he said that 'things do not often go well, you buy something and Amazon.com send you the wrong books'. He called for a revision and a modernisation of the present consumers´ rights.

The European Commission's 'review of the Consumer Acquis' (EU law) was launched in 2004 and forms part of the wider 'better regulation' drive aimed at simpler, clearer European law.

The report was adopted by 486 votes in favour to 77 against with 15 abstentions, with amendments

Review of the EU consumer acquis Rapporteur: Béatrice Patrie

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