On Wednesday 19 February, the ambassadors of the Member States to the European Union (Coreper I) validated the draft conclusions prepared by the Croatian Presidency of the EU Council on ‘better regulation’ for the next ‘Competitiveness’ Council, but not without a discussion on the ‘one in, one out’ principle.
The Croatian Presidency had left in square brackets a passage (paragraph 11) essentially encouraging the Commission to ensure that compliance costs and administrative burdens could be taken into account when drawing up the new instrument intended to implement the 'one in, one out' principle, which is expected in April.
This passage reportedly received the explicit support of about ten Member States, including Germany, the Netherlands, Italy, and Portugal. These countries support the rationalisation of European rules.
France, Luxembourg, and Belgium, for their part, are reported to have expressed some reluctance towards this approach. They insist that this principle must be used with caution, by favouring trade-offs that are above all qualitative. As such, they adopted a declaration along these lines.
In the end, the paragraph was supported by the Member States, but the conclusions will be discussed in camera at the ‘Competitiveness’ Council on Thursday 27 February.
Green Deal and European Semester. According to a provisional agenda, two further debates are scheduled for the same day and are likely to be public. A first debate will be devoted to the European Green Deal and will follow a presentation by the European Commission.
Here, the Croatian Presidency will seek to identify the key actions to be carried out by various industrial sectors in order to achieve the goal of climate neutrality by 2050. It will also seek progress in considerations on the phenomenon of carbon leakage and the role of digitisation in accelerating the transition to a circular economy.
In the afternoon, the competent ministers will be invited to give their views on how to strengthen the monitoring of the implementation of EU internal market rules in the framework of the ‘European Semester’ budgetary process.
In particular, the Croatian Presidency intends to survey Member States on the relevance of the ‘Single Market Performance Report’. It will seek to understand, in this context, which indicators still need to be developed in order to improve monitoring and, above all, to determine whether the ‘European Semester’ is the right tool for strengthening coordination between Member States.
Finally, the ministerial working lunch is expected to be devoted to artificial intelligence. (Original version in French by Pascal Hansens)