Animal diseases: Community criteria for eradication and monitoring

PURPOSE: the codification of Council Decision laying down the criteria for the eradication and monitoring of certain animal diseases.

PROPOSED ACT: Council Decision.

CONTENT: the purpose of the proposal is to undertake a codification of Council Decision 90/638/EEC laying down Community criteria for the eradication and monitoring of certain animal diseases. It is being proposed within the context of a people’s Europe and the simplification and clarification of Community law in order to make it clearer and more accessible to ordinary citizens.

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 needed to identify the current rules.

This is the case with Council Decision 90/638/EEC, hence the proposed codification thereof. The new Decision will supersede the various acts incorporated in it. The proposal fully preserves the content of the acts being codified and hence does no more than bring them together with only such formal amendments as are required by the codification exercise itself.