Today the French Senat examined today in a second reading the bill on simplification and improvement of the quality of the law which was tabled in August 2009 by Mr Warsman, the chairman of the legal committee of the National Assembly. The bill contains some 145 articles, most of them very technical, but there are a few illuminating breakthroughs, or at least signs that the never-ending war on red tape is still on. For example:
Article 3 seeks to reduce paperwork by allowing administrations to exchange data to avoid asking citizens for duplicates of official documentation already held by another service (example birth certificate). Citizens may even refuse to provide copies of documents arguably already submitted. This is a further advance on the very specifically French approach successfully launched with the 12 April 2000 law on “relations between citizens and the Administration”.
Article 8 offers the possibility of substituting formal consultation of an official body by an internet consultation or any other suitable channel.
The other articles, several of which are directly transposing the Services Directive, should not be dismissed because they sound so very technical. But retrospectively, they do show a recognition of how far the over-administration of the country has reached, and are perhaps only the tip of the iceberg.
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