Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2007-09-03-Speech-1-092"
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"en.20070903.17.1-092"2
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"Mr President, I would like to take up Mrs Lévai’s excellent argument. It is a good thing that we take time in Parliament to consider the quality of legislation and regulations at least once a year. Our regulations and legislation are the visiting card of the European Union. They form the framework within which our citizens work and live and within which companies have to operate. This means that we have to place a great deal of emphasis on their quality.
How are things at the moment? They are moving in the right direction. The Commission has unfolded a number of initiatives. An Impact Assessment Board has been set up and it is doing a great deal of good work. However, that is not enough. I have said it before many times: we need greater transparency and I make the case once again for an external expert panel to evaluate whether the impact assessments of the Commission have been drawn up in accordance with the right methodology.
We need a review, not bureaucracy. Mrs Frassoni always cries: ‘You want more bureaucracy’, but I do not want any bureaucracy at all. I only want more transparency and I think that every form of transparency is a virtue in government. An additional advantage is that when impact assessments are carried out of amendments in Parliament itself – and I have to say, they have still not been a great success – we can look at whether we could put them to an independent body of this nature, rather than the Impact Assessment Board of the Commission.
The fact that there is to be an expert panel for the problem of administrative burdens is an important step in the right direction. That is a very positive development that should have a role to play in the area of red tape. Of course, who will sit on that panel is very important. It must not become a procession, of course; it must not be a kind of pseudo-parliament, but a small committee of experts: so no captains of industry, no civil servants, no politicians, but ordinary professional people who know what an impact assessment is, who know what red tape is and who have plenty of experience in this area in their national contexts.
The Commission has set a clear target: administrative burdens must be reduced by 25% by 2012. That is a very good thing but it should, of course, be a net target. This means that a reduction of 25% from now should, in fact, be achieved and that new administrative burdens should be included in the calculation and deducted from the result, otherwise it will just be a waste of time.
I would like to highlight one more point that warrants special attention from the Commission. We are discussing reducing administrative burdens now, but in the future we will also need to work on reducing compliance costs. Compliance costs are the costs that companies and citizens are forced to incur in order to comply with legislation and they are extremely high. When we are discussing the costs of regulations, we must also concern ourselves with the compliance costs, which are ignored at the moment."@en1
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