§ Lord Pearson of Rannochasked Her Majesty's Government:
How many documents issued by the institutions of the European Community have been deposited in Parliament in the last 12 months, how many of these propose Community legislation, and how these figures compare with the figures for each of the four previous years.
Baroness Chalker of Wallasey: Seven hundred and thirty-two European Community documents were deposited in Parliament in 1993. It would involve disproportionate cost to establish how many of these documents contained legislative proposals. The total figures for deposited documents in the previous four years were as follows:
Number 1989 761 1990 773 1991 755 1992 790
§ Lord Pearson of Rannochasked Her Majesty's Government:
Whether there is any evidence that the quantity of draft legislation proposed by the European Commission has diminished (a) since the completion of the Single Market on 1 January 1993, or (b) since the ratification of the Treaty on European Union, signed at Maastricht.
§ Baroness Chalker of WallaseyThe number of legislative proposals put forward by the Commission in recent years has fallen markedly, from 162 in 1990 to 73 in 1992. The figures for 1993 are not yet available, but we anticipate it will be around 70. This reduction is a consequence both of the completion of the Single Market and of the subsidiarity provisions of the Treaty on European Union, signed at Maastricht.