The Commission last week adopted a Communication that reviews the current state of the project undertaken by Brussels last year to update and simplify Community acquis. The objectives of the project, still in progress, are the simplification and clarification of the content of EU law, on the one hand, and the reduction of the volume of EU legislation, on the other. Over the last fourteen months, 30 proposals of simplification have been adopted (20 more are still being examined by the European Parliament), that will permit the volume of Community acquis to be reduced by 25/30% by the end of 2005: it is calculated that this simplification will be translated into a reduction of over 30,000 pages of EU law, which currently amounts to over 100,000 pages in the various official gazettes of the European Communities. The Union is also proceeding to the complete withdrawal of some 900 legislative acts, rendered obsolete by the adoption of successive legislation but never officially rescinded.
