Explanatory Memorandum to COM(2013)184 - Denominations and technical specifications of euro coins intended for circulation (recast)

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dossier COM(2013)184 - Denominations and technical specifications of euro coins intended for circulation (recast).
source COM(2013)184 EN
date 11-04-2013
1. On 1 April 1987 the Commission decided i to instruct its staff that all 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 their provisions are clear and readily understandable.

2. The codification of Council Regulation (EC) No 975/98 of 3 May 1998 on denominations and technical specifications of euro coins intended for circulation[2] has been initiated by the Commission, and a relevant proposal has been submitted to the legislative authority[3]. The new Regulation was to have superseded the various acts incorporated in it i.

3. In the course of the legislative procedure, in its opinion regarding the codification proposal[5] the European Central Bank (ECB) recommended that certain changes be introduced with regard to the technical specifications set out in the table contained in Article 1 of Regulation (EC) No 975/98 as well as in Annex I to the draft codified text. Since the proposed redrafting for that Annex would imply certain substantive amendments, and would therefore go beyond straightforward codification, it was considered necessary that point 8[6] of the Interinstitutional Agreement of 20 December 1994 – Accelerated working method for official codification of legislative texts[7] – be applied, in the light of the Joint declaration on that point[8].

4. The amendment to be made to the table contained in Article 1 of Regulation (EC) No 975/98 consists of a replacement of all existing values relating to the thickness of coins with new values. In that table, the thickness of the coins is indicated in the third column, with a footnote mentioning that the values relating to thickness are of an indicative nature. As was pointed out in the abovementioned opinion of the ECB, while those indicative values may have been the only values that could be laid down in 1998 when the technical specifications of euro coins intended for circulation were adopted for the first time, it is now considered appropriate that such indicative values be replaced by the real thickness values of euro coins, which are well known and used as reference value by the mints to produce the coins. As a consequence of that change, recital 13 of Regulation (EC) No 975/98, which contains a statement regarding the indicative nature of the existing thickness values, should be deleted.

5. It is therefore appropriate to transform the codification of Regulation (EC) No 975/98 into a recast in order to incorporate the necessary amendments.

ê 975/98 (adapted)