BRUSSELS, Dec. 9 (UPI) -- The new enterprise commissioner for the European Union says he will cut red tape now choking the continent's businesses.
Gunter Verheugen said he would judge each proposed EU law by how it would affect medium-sized businesses to reduce paperwork in a five-year plan to boost business prospects, the Financial Times reported Thursday.
For starters, he said he intended to cut the burden on industry of the EU's controversial chemicals directive.
He also put pressure Wednesday on French President Jacques Chirac to stop blocking a single European patent by insisting on registrations in multiple languages.
"Cutting red tape shall be my trademark. Reducing red tape, removing unnecessary restrictions, screening the existing legislation -- whether or not we still need it, whether we can simplify it. We should not bring forward legislation without proper impact assessment."
Verheugen said resolution of the 15-year-old stand-off over a single EU patent is even supported by senior French industrialists who recently told him they agreed new inventions should be registered solely in English. Chirac's insistence the patent should also require registration in French was "the strategy of the French government, not the French business community."
