ConsLeg The consolidation of the European legislation Dr. Holger Bagola Publications Office Dir A...

ConsLegThe consolidation of the

European legislation

Dr. Holger BagolaPublications Office

Dir A – Methods and development ‘Formats’

Version 2.0 - June 2006 2

Consolidation of EU legislation: why?

Consolidation of legislative acts is an important help for the citizens as well as their juridical counselors to collect information on the life of a given law.Consolidation offers the possibilities to know about the provisions of a law at a given time and a given place.Consolidation plays an important role in the politics of simplification and transparency.


Types of simplification processes

• Consolidation brings together a basic law and all its modifiers, amendments and corrigendaThe result is a readable text with bibliographic references to the origin of a document component.The result is without any legal value, but for information reasons only.



• Codification is generally based on the consolidation of a family of acts, is revised by the competent services, controlled by the legal service and finally adopted and published Generally a codified act replaces the complete original family.



• Recast redrafts a single act or a collection of acts of a given legislative domain thus creating a single new act.The procedure is generally based on the consolidation of all basic acts of the group.The legal act is redrafted and enters into the normal legislative procedure. The single act is finally adopted and published, thus replacing the complete collection of original acts.


Definition of a consolidation family

• Basic act+ At least one amendment+ Or at least one corrigenda

• Average relation: 1 basic act : 5 modifiers (amendments and corrigenda)

• Peaks: > 50 modifiers• Generally several modifications expressed

by the same modifier: example 10 modifiers define more than 500 modifications.


Consolidation production

• Daily consolidationIntegration of the provisions of an amendment into a basic act or already formerly consolidated family versionAbout 3,000 families of the acquis communautaire (since 2003) are kept up-to-date in all languages for which the necessary basis is available (sometimes only 11, sometimes up to 19/20).The consolidation process in all languages takes 6 weeks in average.



• Backlog consolidationConcerns the consolidation of the Secondary Legislation in the new language versions after 2004 accession. By end of 2005 about 800 families had been updated, the remaining ones will be finished until end of March 2007.Consolidation of Bulgarian and Romanian will follow on the same way.



• Consolidation work flow– Pre-production

• Daily analysis of the Official Journal• Identification of family for consolidation• Preparation of working instructions• Compilation of source files (Formex, TIFF images)• Registration in the management system• Internal validation of these steps• Request for consolidation of identified family to

external contractor• Sending working instructions and sources to external

contractor



• Consolidation work flow– Production (stricto sensu)

The execution of the consolidation is completely outsourced. The external contractor is charged with the consolidation and the preparation of the results in Formex and PDF

– Post-production• Reception of consolidated families in a weekly rhythm• Automatic validation of coherence of the delivered

formats leading to acceptation or rejection• Validation of contents• Updating of the management system• Publication of PDF version on EUR-Lex


Types of modification

• Structural modifications– Replacement of a structural component– Insertion– Deletion– Restructuring

• Sequential/Textual modifications– Replacement of an expression– Insertion– Deletion– Secondary modifications (grammatical update)


Some statistics

• Consolidation production– 10,000 pages a week for daily consolidation– 6,000 pages a week for backlog consolidation– Acts concerned by consolidation

• Basic acts (as parents of a consolidation family:3,005 corresponding to 51,077 pages a language

• Modifiers in force: 8,049 on 66,136 pages a language

• Corrigenda in force: 2,351 or 3,946 pages a language


Some statistics

• Consolidation production in the context of codification– Codified acts by end of 2006: 250 families in 20

languages– Reduction of about 1,000 acts– 10% less in volume of the acquis by

December 2006


Example of consolidated text (PDF)


Example of consolidated text (XML)

• Insertion of an article<?CLG.MDFO ID="O001001M001000" IDREF="C001001M001000" ACTION="INSERTED" LEVEL="STRUCTURE" COMMAND="EXPLICIT" ACTIVE.DOC="32005D0755" ACTIVE.LOC="AR:1;PT:1" MOD.LEVEL="1"?>

<ARTICLE IDENTIFIER="002A">

<TI.ART>Article 2a</TI.ART>

<ALINEA>

...

</ALINEA>

</ARTICLE>

<?CLG.MDFC ID="C001001M001000" IDREF="O001001M001000"?>



• Opening processing instruction<?CLG.MDFO

ID="O001001M001000"

IDREF="C001001M001000"

ACTION="INSERTED"

LEVEL="STRUCTURE"

COMMAND="EXPLICIT"

ACTIVE.DOC="32005D0755"

ACTIVE.LOC="AR:1;PT:1"

MOD.LEVEL="1"?>



• Closing processing instruction

<?CLG.MDFC

ID="C001001M001000"

IDREF="O001001M001000"?>



• Replacement of an alinea

...<?CLG.MDFO ID="O001001M002000" IDREF="C001001M002000" ACTION="REPLACED" LEVEL="STRUCTURE" COMMAND="EXPLICIT" ACTIVE.DOC="32005D0755" ACTIVE.LOC="AR:1;PT:2" MOD.LEVEL="1"?>

<ALINEA>All costs of such destruction shall be chargeable to the person responsible for the consignment.</ALINEA>

<?CLG.MDFC ID="C001001M002000" IDREF="O001001M002000"?>

...



• Opening processing instruction <?CLG.MDFO

ID="O001001M002000"

IDREF="C001001M002000"

ACTION="REPLACED"

LEVEL="STRUCTURE"

COMMAND="EXPLICIT"

ACTIVE.DOC="32005D0755"

ACTIVE.LOC="AR:1;PT:2"

MOD.LEVEL="1"?>

ConsLeg The consolidation of the European legislation Dr. Holger Bagola Publications Office Dir A...

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