Explanatory Memorandum to COM(2015)48 - Protection against the effects of the extra-territorial application of legislation adopted by a third country and actions based thereon or resulting therefrom (recast)

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dossier COM(2015)48 - Protection against the effects of the extra-territorial application of legislation adopted by a third country and actions ...
source COM(2015)48 EN
date 06-02-2015
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 citizens, thus giving them new opportunities and the chance to make use of the specific rights it gives them.

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[1] 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.

3. The Conclusions of the Presidency of the Edinburgh European Council (December 1992) confirmed this[2], 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.

4. The purpose of this proposal is to undertake a codification of Council Regulation (EC) No 2271/96 of 22 November 1996 protecting against the effects of the extra-territorial application of legislation adopted by a third country, and actions based thereon or resulting therefrom[3]. The new Regulation will supersede the various acts incorporated in it i, fully preserving the content of the acts being codified. At the same time, it is also appropriate to make certain substantive amendments to Articles 5 and 12 of Regulation (EC) No 2271/96, with a view to delegating powers to the Commission for establishing the criteria for the application of a provision contained in the second paragraph of Article 5 of that Regulation. Therefore, the proposal is being presented in the form of a recast.

5. The recast proposal was drawn up on the basis of a preliminary consolidation, in 22 official languages, of Regulation (EC) No 2271/96 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 set out in Annex III to the recast Regulation.

ê 2271/96 (adapted)