On Thursday 22 January, the European employers’ organisation BusinessEurope updated its proposals for simplifying legislation by publishing an ‘Omnibook’ proposing new improvements or withdrawals of texts.
“Regulatory burden continues to weigh heavily on European businesses; we know from surveys with our members that they have identified this as the primary challenge to EU investment. The annual investment gap to fill the innovation, infrastructure, dual transition and resilience gaps in our economy is between €750 billion and €800 billion, according to the 2024 Draghi Report”, explains the organisation.
“The first year of the EU’s ‘omnibus’ proposals for simplifying regulation has come to an end. We salute the unprecedented efforts made by the European Commission”.
BusinessEurope, for example, is calling on the Commission not to produce any new consumer policy rules for the Digital Fairness Act (DFA), which is due to be adopted this year.
“The DFA could introduce rules on misleading practices, addictive designs, exploitative personalisation practices, exploitative price-related marketing and problems with digital contracts (among other topics). And existing European regulations have been considerably amended in recent years, with rules that cover, to a large extent, the issues mentioned above”.
“Adding new rules in areas already covered by legislation, before the full application of the new European rules adopted, can lead to disproportionate compliance constraints for businesses and legal uncertainty”, says the document: “We do not see the need for new rules to be adopted”.
The document also mentions CBAM, the Carbon Border Adjustment Mechanism, and the proposed BEFIT directive on a framework for the taxation of corporate income in Europe.
“Before advancing major new reforms at EU level such as BEFIT, the EU should allow the implementation of the Minimum Tax Directive and related international tax initiatives to stabilise”, the document goes on to say.
In terms of employment and social policy, BusinessEurope continues to call for the withdrawal of the directive on traineeships and is structuring its demands on the equal pay directive and the e-declaration for posted workers.
Link to the document: https://aeur.eu/f/kcj (Original version in French by Solenn Paulic)