The term ‘deregulation’ is increasingly accepted in debates between co-legislators across the European Union. At the ‘Competitiveness’ Council on Monday 8 December, many EU industry and internal market ministers called for massive simplification measures. In their view, the various ‘omnibus’ simplification packages proposed by the Commission in recent months do not go far enough.
A real “change of mindset” is needed, according to the Polish Finance Minister, Andrzej Domański. “The EU is a regulatory superpower, and it must become a deregulatory superpower”, he insisted.
This term was echoed by several of his counterparts, such as the Finnish minister, Matias Marttinen, who called for there to be “no fear of deregulation”.
Most Member States have called for more thorough impact assessments by the European Commission before new legislation is drafted, and even at the amendment stage. Sweden’s Minister for Industry, Ebba Busch, used the example of the Christmas tree, which should not be overloaded with decorations, and indicated that similarly the temptation to overload legislative texts should be resisted.
The ‘one in, one out’ principle for European legislation was mentioned by several participants at the meeting, who called for it to be strictly adhered to. This is particularly true of the Cypriot minister, Nicodemos Damianou, whose country will assume the rotating Presidency of the EU Council in January. “Cyprus will be fully committed to implementing this call for action”, he said.
Only the Spanish Industry Minister, Jordi Hereu, has shown restraint in this massive simplification drive. For his country, it is important to maintain a certain degree of ambition when it comes to the standards to be met by companies in the EU. “Simplification should never be used to undermine the objectives set. The aim should be simplification, not deregulation”, he insisted.
Danish proposals. Ahead of the ‘Competitiveness’ Council, the Danish Presidency has put forward a number of ideas for simplification, “through the standardisation, digitalisation and automation of commercial data and reports”. In particular, it called for a harmonised data format and an open, common European data infrastructure.
See the note on the single data market: https://aeur.eu/f/jwf (Original version in French by Léa Marchal)