More than 60 European Union draft laws will be scrapped this month, as Jose Manuel Barroso, the president of the European Commission, launches Brussels's biggest deregulation campaign.

Mr Barroso wants to axe a wide variety of proposed laws designed to impose EU-wide standards, claiming that some legislation was "absurd".

Next month he will go further, telling staff at the commission to put the legislative machine into reverse by simplifying and scrapping laws already on the EU's 85,000-page statute book.

Mr Barroso said that he was determined that the commission should embrace better regulation, impact assessments and the option of not legislating at all. "The important thing is to change the culture of the organisation," he said.

Mr Barroso and Gunter Verheugen, the EU enterprise commissioner, examined 200 draft laws in various stages of the Brussels decision-making process, and have so far identified 69 to be withdrawn and scrapped.

Laws will be axed if legislation can be better left to member states, where there is an inadequate assessment of the impact on business, or where the measure is seen as "heavy handed".

Some have been lying on the shelf for years and many of them are trivial in their impact. But Mr Barroso says they are the laws which cause most annoyance.

Mr Barroso will also urge commission colleagues on September 27th to withdraw proposals for EU-wide rules in areas such as food labelling, presentation and advertising, the regulation of sales promotions and weekend lorry bans.

The former Portuguese prime minister sees the better regulation initiative as part of the commission's relaunch of its economic reform drive. However, he said he would continue to legislate where necessary.