'Can you help Eric, I'm confused!' said a recent enquirer, adding: 'I was looking for the 'Action Programme for Reducing Administrative Burdens in the EU: Sectoral Reduction Plans and 2009 Actions' published earlier this year as COM(2009) 544 final and found it without much difficulty in Eur-Lex. There the problems started however, as it keeps referring to Annexes which are not present. It is only 13 pages long and ends with no mention as far as I can see of where these mysterious Annexes are to be found.'

'I can see why you're confused' said Eric, who then explained that it is normal practice for the Commission to publish Annexes separately, usually in an accompanying SECdoc, whose number is given on the front page of the COMdoc. Alternatively, you might expect an accompanying document to be published on the same day and to be available through checking the date list in Eur-Lex. However, neither holds true in this case.

The Annex can however be tracked down by a little lateral thinking, based on COM (2009) 544 being concerned with the 'Better Regulation' initiative. This is a subheading on the Enterprise and Industry DG home page, and if you then go to the 'Better Regulation' section you'll see the heading 'Reference documents'. Click on that and you will see that one of the documents is 'Communication of the Commission on administrative burdens, which is COM (2009) 544. Next to it is a link to 'Annex' which opens the 114-page document you are looking for.

It's a little ironic that documents concerning the need to cut red tape should take such a long time to find!