On Friday 29 July, the European Commission published its Annual Burden Survey for 2021. This review is part of the simplification and streamlining guidelines for ‘better regulation’ and the ‘Regulatory Fitness and Performance Programme’ (REFIT).
The objective announced by the European Commission is to simplify and streamline legislation and to reduce the costs and administrative burden, particularly in terms of compliance, for stakeholders and especially for small and medium-sized enterprises and citizens.
To do this, the Commission is putting forward the “one in, one out” tool. The announced approach is to compensate the introduction of possible new burdens on businesses and citizens resulting from new Commission proposals by reducing existing burdens in the same area. This principle has been tested in a pilot project in 2021 on 10 legislative proposals that may have different types of impacts for different actors and in different sectors.
In 2021, the Commission has assessed 29 existing EU policies and adopted 35 initiatives with simplification and burden reduction measures. The report provides various examples of such work carried out by the European Commission in different policy areas.
Link to the report: https://aeur.eu/f/2rl (Original version in French by Emilie Vanderhulst)