Schrappen van "verjaarde" EU-regels verloopt traag (en)

EUOBSERVER / BRUSSELS - A Commission document to be published on Wednesday (16 June) will show that Brussels will miss its target of cutting the body of EU legislation by 25% before the end of this year.

The communication from the Commission, obtained by the EUobserver, assesses the progress of the EU executive in reducing and simplifying the so-called "acquis communautaire", the vast body of EU law that runs to over 80,000 pages.

In 2001, the Commission set itself the target of reducing the volume of the acquis by 25 percent - or 22,500 pages - by the end of this year, scrapping obsolete and overlapping passages and limiting the administrative burden on businesses.

But in the new document the Commission concludes that "the 25% objective is unlikely to be reached by end-2004".

Translation problems

The Commission says it has encountered "unforeseen problems", which are "for a large part beyond its control".

The EU executive blames the delays on EU enlargement, it states in its report.

"The Commission's overwhelming priority has been to ensure successful enlargement, the preparations for which have slowed down activities in other areas, including some of the activities aimed at up-dating and simplifying the Community acquis".

In particular, the failure to finish the translation of the acquis into the new member states' languages has caused headaches for the Commission.

This translation was envisaged to be finished before enlargement, but this proved to be impossible - causing delays in other areas as well.

In May, it emerged that two crucial new EU financial services directives will suffer six month delays because of translation problems within the EU institutions.

Scrapping red tape

The Commission's effort to reduce the volume of EU legislation, scrapping superfluous parts of the voluminous EU law books, echoes calls by the current Irish presidency as well as the upcoming Dutch, Luxembourg and UK presidencies to cut EU "red tape".

The Belgian and Dutch governments recently proposed to launch an EU anti-red tape web portal on which citizens and companies could report and complain about excessive legislation.