Explanatory Memorandum to COM(2010)179 - Procedure for the provision of information in the field of technical standards and regulations and of rules on Information Society services (Codification)

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dossier COM(2010)179 - Procedure for the provision of information in the field of technical standards and regulations and of rules on Information ...
source COM(2010)179 EN
date 23-04-2010
1. In the context of a people’s Europe, the Commission attaches great importance to simplifying and clarifying the law of the Union so as to make it clearer and more accessible to the ordinary citizen, thus giving him new opportunities and the chance to make use of the specific rights it gives him.

This aim cannot be achieved so long as numerous provisions that have been amended several times, often quite substantially, remain scattered, so that they must be sought partly in the original instrument and partly in later amending ones. Considerable research work, comparing many different instruments, is thus needed to identify the current rules.

For this reason a codification of rules that have frequently been amended is also essential if the law is to be clear and transparent.

2. On 1 April 1987 the Commission decided  i to instruct its staff that all legislative acts should be codified after no more than ten amendments, stressing that this is a minimum requirement and that departments should endeavour to codify at even shorter intervals the texts for which they are responsible, to ensure that the rules are clear and readily understandable.

3. The Conclusions of the Presidency of the Edinburgh European Council (December 1992) confirmed this  i, stressing the importance of codification as it offers certainty as to the law applicable to a given matter at a given time.

Codification must be undertaken in full compliance with the normal procedure for the adoption of acts of the Union.

Given that no changes of substance may be made to the instruments affected by codification, the European Parliament, the Council and the Commission have agreed, by an interinstitutional agreement dated 20 December 1994, that an accelerated procedure may be used for the fast-track adoption of codification instruments.

4. The purpose of this proposal is to undertake a codification of Directive 98/34/EC of the European Parliament and of the Council of 22 June 1998 laying down a procedure for the provision of information in the field of technical standards and regulations and of rules on Information Society services  i. The new Directive will supersede the various acts incorporated in it  i; this proposal fully preserves the content of the acts being codified and hence does no more than bring them together with only such formal amendments as are required by the codification exercise itself.


5. The codification proposal was drawn up on the basis of a preliminary consolidation, in all official languages, of Directive 98/34/EC and the instruments amending it, carried out by the Publications Office of the European Union, by means of a data-processing system. Where the Articles have been given new numbers, the correlation between the old and the new numbers is shown in a table contained in Annex VI to the codified Directive.

98/34/EC (adapted)

1 98/48/EC Art. 1 pt.1