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Revision of Directive will take longer
The referral of several questions to the European Food Safety Authority will add another year to the process of the revision.
It now looks as though the legislative proposal for the revision of Directive 86/609 will not be available to the European Parliament and the public before the middle of 2006, adding a further year's delay to the process. The Commission has referred a number of questions to the European Food Safety Agency (see December's Bulletin) and their opinion, which was originally requested in July 2004 looks as though it will not be ready until the autumn of 2005. The EFSA have set up a working party which intends to consult experts on specific issues during the spring and summer, as well as undertaking a literature review.
DG Environment will shortly launch a call for tenders for an organisation to undertake a preliminary impact assessment on some aspects of the proposed Directive, to be competed by the end of 2005. The first draft of the Directive is not expected until early 2006, when it will be put out to a stakeholder consultation. Only after the impact assessment is available and the responses from the consultation received will officials begin drafting the legislative proposal, which will then need to go to other DGs for 'inter-service consultation' before it can be published. So it looks unlikely that MEPs will begin the debate until the autumn 2006 session of the Parliament. The whole Parliamentary process can take at least two years, and implementation in the Member States a further two, so national legislation to implement the Directive may not be in place until 2010.