Time for a normative revolution
The quantity and complexity of the legal standards have steadily increased in France in recent years. Faced with increasingly numerous, complex and inoperative rules, and yet another public program of simplification, we suggest a new method for a true normative revolution.
How to get out of the regulatory hell? There is a way out, as explained in this report by Jean-Ludovic Silicani, a former Commissioner for the reform of the state. We suggest to limit the domain of the law by simply reformulating the fundamental principles of each one of our numerous law codes.
For a major revolution
The goal is very clear : to reduce by 90% the quantity of legislative provisions, by extracting from each of these law codes the essential rights, obligations and prohibitions.
Some might say it is a very difficult, if not impossible, exercise. Yet Robert Badinter and Antoine Lyon-Caen demonstrated the opposite by writing down, two years ago, the fundamental principles of the labour law.
As the normative power gets more decentralized, it will be essential to maintain an interactive space of discussion for actors on the ground and bring them together via public consultations before writing down the new standards.
The spirit of the laws comes first
These actors will thus be empowered rather than forced to respect obscure and stifling texts which have become less and less understandable. Our proposal, ambitious but realistic, would thus make it possible to relax the rules, decentralize the regulatory power and, above all, favour “the spirit of the laws” rather than their illegible wording.
