Currently there are also some ambitious efforts to draft common
European legislative XML standards to be shared by all EU Member
States.17 However, those attempts will face similar problems that arose
within the N-Lex project described below. Existing legislative drafting
standards of the Member States correlate to national legislative procedures.
Differences in document structure, legal hierarchies etc. reflect
specific national needs and legal systems. A country-independent data
format will therefore either have to be restricted to a very simple common
level or will otherwise not satisfy national requirements or even
constrain to national process models. Therefore a common standard
must be flexible enough to cover different national needs. Nevertheless,
unification on a low level will facilitate document and information exchange,
and in areas with a high degree of European harmonization
such applications or shared tools may prove very useful. In the words of
Michael Uschold, “The more agreement there is, the less it is necessary