Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2005-09-27-Speech-2-181"
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"en.20050927.19.2-181"2
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".
Mr President, I would like to answer the questions that have been put to me. Let me take the timetable first: the Commission will come to a decision about the methodology and organisational principles of the great ‘Better Regulation’ project at the end of October. I will be putting to it an action plan for an initial three-year period in the hope that we will be able to get most of the project completed in that time.
I am just as grateful for what you have had to say about transposition at national level. There are indeed some quite fascinating examples of how Member States have managed to take a short, clear and straightforward European directive and turn it into a bureaucratic monster with many times the number of words needed. There is a splendid English expression for this: ‘gold plating’. Part of this project, to my mind, has to do with us explaining to the European public that this sort of thing has to stop, and that European legislation cannot be used as a sort of protective screen behind which nation states run their pet projects and do things that they would not dare to do otherwise.
That, I think, should answer all your questions. I am grateful for the political support offered to me by three of your speakers, and offer you close and trusting cooperation in this project, which will have a particular impact on all three institutions.
We will in any case have to decide what our priorities are, and we will do so in such a way that we start with the areas that there is reason to believe really are over-regulated by reason of the vast amount of legislation. We have already decided that sectors such as the automobile industry, the construction industry and waste management should be the first to be examined, with all the other sectors to follow on.
In parallel with this, Commissioner Fischer Boel is already working on a fundamental programme for the simplification of the agricultural
the first package of which will be able to be presented this year.
I am much obliged to Mr Swoboda for his support, and can tell him that I can give him the documents he needs right now, as I already have them to hand for him and for the other groups too. These documents will show you what stage the various projects had reached and the reasons why the Commission thinks they should be withdrawn.
Perhaps I might make another brief observation concerning the media. Right now, I have no desire to bore the House or to torment it, but I could well, here and now, read out a list of the occasions on which I have appeared before it to inform it about this project. The first was as long ago as September 2004 – even before I was appointed. I have spoken to your House about this matter on a total of 11 occasions. Initial information was given to your House before the public heard even a word about it – although I do assume that the plenary of the European Parliament can be regarded as representing the European public.
I do indeed insist that I have acted with absolute correctness as regards informing the European Parliament. Until this afternoon, and indeed until I stood up to speak here, neither I nor any of my staff gave the media any information about what is in the list. I have a certain reputation to maintain where my respect for your House is concerned, and so I hope I have made that perfectly clear.
You will, of course, be given all this in black and white. Even though the Commission is entitled to decide independently of anyone else what to do with this list, I think it highly advisable to wait and see what advice we get from Parliament and to act on it when implementing what is decided. The Commission has agreed to this.
Turning to the final question, for which I am extremely grateful, my concern about the economic future of small and medium-sized businesses in Europe was one of the reasons why I proposed this project in the first place. I am perfectly well aware that big business and major firms can handle regulation with relative ease; they can afford to have their own departments to deal with it. The smaller a company is, though, the more burdensome it finds the costs involved in dealing with red tape and the more difficult it is for it to plan and make investments and actually achieve some growth.
I can, then, assure you that the needs of small and medium-sized enterprises will be considered in all that we do. The external expertise on which we will draw will of course include that of the representatives of the small business sector. Our future policy on small and medium-sized enterprises is due to be announced in a communication in only a few weeks’ time, and there will be a great deal in that, too, about the issue of better regulation."@en1
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