At the end of an intergovernmental seminar in Hamburg on Tuesday 10 October, the French and German economy ministers unveiled a joint agenda aimed at reducing the bureaucratic burden in order to unleash creativity and speed up the economic transition, “without sacrificing” the current high level of standards, which they say enables the European Union to “reconcile economic growth with ecological sustainability and social welfare”.
Welcoming the European Commission’s announcement to present initiatives in 2023 to reduce by 25% reporting requirements for companies resulting from EU legislation (see EUROPE 13248/21), the ministers drew up a list of possible measures to be adopted in the short and longer term.
In the short term, the administrative burden on European SMEs should be limited to what is “strictly necessary”. Germany and France are proposing to review the European definition of SMEs, which dates back to 2003, by including a category of companies with 250 to 500 employees (‘small mid-caps’), as well as the financial thresholds included in this European definition in order to take account of inflation.
As part of a review of the GDPR regulation, the two countries are advocating greater legal certainty for operators, with the possibility of adjusting the rules to relieve SMEs, start-ups and NGOs.
In addition, for industrial projects, the mandatory environmental impact studies will have to be properly calibrated and predictable for companies.
In the long term, Berlin and Paris are asking that, in a context of growing global competition where the EU’s partners are not planning to mirror each other’s regulations, each European legislative initiative should be subject to a rigorous competitiveness check, setting out the costs and benefits of all the regulatory options considered in advance. Any initiative will also have to be thought through in the light of digitisation, while remaining neutral from a technological point of view.
The two ministers also want to simplify the obligations for notifying national measures at a European level, citing Directive 2015/1535 on a procedure for the provision of information in the field of technical regulations and of rules on information society services.
As for ex-post evaluations of European legislation, they should focus on how it is implemented on the ground, with Germany having some interesting experience in this area with its ‘reality checks’.
NZIA. Finally, in order to make a success of the energy and climate transition, the two ministers are calling for the ongoing legislative initiatives of the European Green Deal to be finalised, and then for the focus to be on their implementation, in particular by clarifying the compliance deadlines for businesses.
They wish to explore the inclusion of criteria relating to socio-environmental sustainability and security of supply in public procurement procedures and in public aid schemes for ‘green’ technologies.
To see the Franco-German note, go to https://aeur.eu/f/8zo (Original version in French by Mathieu Bion)