Beef: Community scale for the classification of carcases of adult bovine animals (repeal. Regulation (EEC) No 1208/81). Codification

PURPOSE: to undertake a codification of Council Regulation 1208/81/EEC determining the Community scale for the classification of carcases of adult bovine animals.

PROPOSED ACT: Council Regulation

CONTENT: This codification is undertaken in order to simplify and clarify Community law. A codification of rules that have frequently been amended is essential if Community law is to be clear and transparent. On 1 April 1987 the Commission decided to instruct its staff that all legislative 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 the Community rules are clear and readily understandable.

Given that no changes of substance may be made to the instruments affected by codification, the European Parliament, the Council and the Commission have agreed, by an interinstitutional agreement dated 20 December 1994, that an accelerated procedure may be used for the fast-track adoption of codification instruments.

The purpose of this proposal is to undertake a codification of Council Regulation 1208/81/EEC determining the Community scale for the classification of carcases of adult bovine animals. The new Regulation will supersede the various acts incorporated in it; this proposal fully preserves the content of the acts being codified and hence does no more than bringing them together with only such formal amendments as are required by the codification exercise itself.

Where the Articles have been given new numbers, the correlation between the old and the new numbers is shown in a table contained in Annex IV to the codified Regulation.