Agricultural and forestry tractors: EC type-approval (repeal. Directive 74/50/EEC)

The common position, which has been unanimously adopted by the Council, has been further simplified to achieve the aims of this Directive, which are to shorten the time to market and, by harmonising the approval process and introducing the mutual recognition principle in this area, remove the need to fulfil different national technical requirements. More specifically, in the common position, the Council has: - modified the wording in recitals 2 and 6, the latter to adapt it to the standard legal text; - made some horizontal changes to the terminology used (e.g. "equipment" was replaced by "machinery" throughout the text); - slightly modified the documents sent from a type-approval authority to other Member States; - recast some of the procedures for dealing with incompatibility; - simplified safeguard clauses; - modified the wording for the Committee procedures in accordance with the standard legal text used in these cases; - extended by 6 months the deadline to comply with this Directive (January 2005 to July 2005); - redrafted and expanded article 23 dealing with enforcement measures; - increased by 50% of the ceiling for small series and removed limitations in individual EC type-approval (Annex V).�