COMMISSION PLEDGE TO INTRODUCE CITIZENS' SUMMARIES A STEP IN THE RIGHT DIRECTION - WALLIS

11.00.00am BST (GMT +0100) Tue 13th Jun 2006

Diana Wallis, Leader of the UK Liberal Democrats in the European Parliament, who has championed the case for better quality and more citizen-inspired legislation at EU level, welcomed the European Commission's pledge to start producing citizens' summaries as a step in the right direction.

Speaking in the plenary yesterday, Euro MP Diana Wallis said:

"A few weeks ago this Parliament supported my idea of having citizens' summaries at the beginning of each piece of European legislation. The time has now come to put these ideas into practice.

"The main contents should be drafted in plain language, avoiding legal terms, avoiding professional jargon, avoiding references to other legislation, and be no more than one page in length. If EU legislation were properly addressed to our citizens in this way we might have rather fewer petitions."

Support was forthcoming from Margot Wallström, Vice-president of the Commission, who said:

"We should start to produce a layman's summary for every proposal brought forward by the Commission. We are working hard on this and I want to see it become a reality before I leave the Commission. We should be able to explain in one page, in simple, accessible language what we want to do and what our proposals are."

Notes:

The idea of having citizens' summaries as part of each EU legislative act was initially proposed by Diana Wallis, with the support of the UK Plain Language Commission.

Diana Wallis' amendment on citizens' summaries was adopted by the plenary and is available (paragraph 19) in the European Parliament resolution on the Commission's 21st and 22nd Annual reports on monitoring the application of Community law (2003 and 2004), adopted on 16 May 2006

The Plain Language Commission report on 'Clarifying Eurolaw' can be found at: www.clearest.co.uk/files/ClarifyingEurolaw.pdf