Simplification and Implementation

Speed, coherence, and simplification are key political priorities in everything the Commission does. The Political Guidelines clearly highlight simplification and better implementation of EU rules as  core to makes business easier and faster in Europe. Those efforts also lay at the heart of the Commission’s focus to strengthen European competitiveness.

The Simpler and Faster Europe communication sets out a new approach to making EU laws clearer, more efficient, and easier to implement. It aims to radically lighten the regulatory load for people, businesses and administrations in the EU. To boost prosperity and resilience, the Commission will propose unprecedented simplification to unleash opportunities, innovation and growth. We will launch a new drive to speed up, simplify and improve EU policies and laws, make rules clearer and easier to understand and faster to implement. We will also deepen our cooperation with all relevant institutions and stakeholders so that shared responsibility drives better results. To deliver on this, the first Commission work programme of this mandate is heavily focused on simplification initiatives, introducing 11 key proposals that aim at cutting red tape and simplifying rules.

Four main guiding blocks

The new approach to implementation and simplification is guided by the need to take stock of the past, navigate the present, and shape the future. In short, it delivers results on existing, upcoming and new rules, based on four main pillars:

1. Ensuring EU policies deliver results

To help Member States anticipate implementation challenges, the Commission prepares implementation strategies whenever a major legal act is being finalised by the co-legislators. For directives, the Commission provides Member States with an explanatory template and a transposition roadmap to be complemented by Member States. This helps a faster and more effective transposition of EU rules.

The Commission uses expert groups to build closer partnerships between national authorities, supporting implementation and providing peer support between Member States. To ensure smooth application of EU rules, the Commission provides Support to Member States support in enhancing administrative capacity, digital tools, and data, including through the Technical Support Instrument.

All Commissioners and Executive Vice-Presidents organise two implementation dialogues with stakeholders per year, to identify issues of poor implementation, gold-plating or fragmentation, and uncover opportunities for simplification and harmonisation.

When Member States do not implement EU law and cooperation has failed, the Commission does not hesitate to take resolute enforcement action, where necessary by referring Member States to Court, including with financial sanctions. where necessary by referring Member States to Court, including with financial sanctions. 

2. Making Europe simpler and faster

 The green and digital shifts are changing economies and societies around the world, creating strong competition for resources and innovation. To succeed in this new environment, we need a bold plan to boost competitiveness—making regulations simpler while keeping our key goals and high standards. To translate this new drive into practical action, the Commission will use the following tools and actions: 

• The 25% target for reducing reporting burdens, without undermining the policy objectives, will cover all administrative costs. This corresponds to cutting recurring administrative costs by EUR 37.5 billion by the end of the mandate. The administrative burden for SMEs will be reduced by at least 35%. 
• Simplification is a priority in the annual Commission work programmes. Many initiatives will be proposed in the omnibus packages that maximise simplification by addressing interactions between different pieces of legislation.
• The stress-testing of EU legislation is a continuous process aimed at reviewing the entire EU acquis to capture cumulative impacts, potential inconsistencies and identify simplification opportunities. It is based on evaluations of individual laws and entire policy areas, planned in the annual Commission work programs which will feed the following round of simplification packages.
• Reality checks will allow the Commission to reach out to practitioners in companies, in particular SMEs and small mid-caps across a wide range of areas, to understand their experience on the ground, identify any hurdles and the impact of EU law on their activities. 

3. Improving how we make new rules

It is essential that new legislation is simple, unambiguous and easy to understand and implement. Implementation and enforcement issues are considered from the moment when the Commission designs its proposals, and throughout the legislative process

Reinforced SME and competitiveness checks are systematically applied to the preparation of relevant legislation. They will help to identify potential issues regarding the competitive position of EU companies affected and to prepare appropriate mitigating measures as well as present more clearly the impacts on SMEs.

For delegated and implementing acts, an impact assessment will be prepared. Even when there are no policy choices, if significant impacts are expected, the Commission will present a cost or cost-savings analysis. 

To lighten reporting burdens and compliance costs, the Commission is using the ‘digital by default’ and ‘once-only’ principles in partnership with national, regional and local authorities and the relevant EU agencies.

The Commission will put forward, in Q2 2025, suggestions to the co-legislators of a simple methodology for assessing the impacts of their significant amendments introduced during the legislative process, to test and showcase the feasibility of carrying out such assessments without unduly delaying the legislative process. 

4. Partnership and co-ownership

Achieving the simplification and implementation goals will require a strong commitment from all other institutions and stakeholders, including the European Parliament and the Council as well as national, regional and local authorities. The Commission will report regularly on progress made. Each Commissioner will present an annual progress report on implementation and enforcement in his or her area to the respective Parliament Committee and Council formation. The principles of partnership and cooperation will guide the Commission’s work, and the Commission stands ready to work closely together with Parliament and Council to these ends, including by renewing the Interinstitutional Agreement on Better Lawmaking to clarify how best to achieve the simplification and implementation goals. 

An annual cycle, involving all Commissioners and services