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Better Regulation

What is better regulation?

Simpler, lighter, and faster EU regulation is one of the key enablers of Europe's competitiveness. That is why, both simplification and implementation are important Commission priorities, underpinned by specific structures and mechanisms. The Commission strives to simplify and lighten the administrative burden of EU regulations to ensure they are proportionate, stable, coherent, and technology neutral. 

In this context, the better regulation agenda helps the EU deliver evidence-based policies and laws that achieve their objectives in the most efficient way, while being tailormade to the needs of EU citizens, businesses, and civil society. The better regulation guidelines and toolbox provide concrete guidance to Commission services involved in preparing new initiatives and proposals, or managing and evaluating existing legislation.

Better regulation ensures that:

  • EU actions are informed by the best available evidence and designed to achieve desired impact to bring benefits for the EU society, economy and environment and help the Commission deliver on its strategic priorities
  • regulatory environment is simple, effective, efficient coherent and correctly implemented to make business in Europe simpler and faster 
  • there is less red-tape and reporting in Europe to boost investments and competitiveness 
  • decision-making is open and transparent for citizens, businesses and other stakeholders
  • citizens and stakeholders can contribute to the policy and law‑making process through stakeholders’ consultations, online public consultations, implementation dialogues, reality checks and feedback to Commission calls for evidence and acts
  • EU initiatives deliver as expected and remain fit for purpose and future challenges, including by drawing from Commission’s work on strategic foresight
  • the principles of subsidiarity and proportionality are respected
  • EU values and effective regulatory models are promoted worldwide, by supporting better regulation good practices in international policymaking, e.g. creation of global standards. 

What are the key instruments of better regulation?

Evaluations, fitness checks, and impact assessments

The Commission is responsible for planning, preparing, and proposing new EU laws and policies. Its work is guided by the annual Commission Work Programme. In the preparatory process the Commission is respecting a set of rules and guidelines. 

In line with the ‘evaluate first’ principle, evaluation precedes work on the revision of an existing policy or law and provides evidence to the problem definition.

Commission evaluations and fitness checks analyse the performance of existing policies, programmes, and legislation. Based on evidence, evaluations assess how an existing policy or legislation is effective, relevant, coherent, and has an EU added value. These evaluations then inform preparation of reviews or new initiatives. 

Impact assessments examine whether there is a need for EU action, analyse the possible impacts of available solutions and guide Commission choice and preparation of the proposal. This analysis is carried out during the preparation phase, before the Commission finalises a proposal for a new or revised law.  

In addition, strategic foresight is an important tool for creating future-proof and coherent policies in all sectors. Strategic foresight explores different possible futures, alongside the opportunities and challenges they might present. Ultimately, it helps policymakers to act in the present to shape the future.

Simplification at the core of better regulation

Building on the regulatory fitness and performance programme (REFIT), the Commission is moving into a higher gear to make EU laws simpler and to reduce unnecessary costs of regulation while still achieving intended objectives. By stress-testing of the EU acquis through evaluations and fitness checks, the Commission’s resulting simplification proposals will ultimately simplify EU laws and reduce regulatory burdens. This will help the Commission to achieve the reduction of existing administrative burdens by at least 25%, and by 35% for SMEs. The ‘one in, one out’ approach ensures that all burdens introduced by the Commission initiatives are considered and administrative burdens are offset by removing burdens of equivalent value in the same policy area.

Competitiveness is a key priority: a new SME and competitiveness check will help capturing better these two dimensions in impact assessments The Commission presents a yearly overview of its efforts on simplification and burden reduction to show progress towards these objectives.

Quality control

The Regulatory Scrutiny Board, an independent body of Commission officials and experts from outside the Commission, reviews impact assessments and selected evaluations. The Board publishes annual reports on what it has done to deliver on its mission.

Subsidiarity and proportionality

In line with the principle of subsidiarity, the Commission aims to act only where it is necessary and where it delivers clear benefits over measures taken at national, regional or local levels. A subsidiarity grid is attached to all politically sensitive and important initiatives accompanied by an impact assessment. 

The proportionality principle focuses on the financial and administrative impact of proposed legislation, to ensure that regulatory actions do not exceed what is necessary to achieve the legislative and policy objectives. Any such impact must be minimised and must be proportionate to the policy objectives. This means that all policies are delivered in the simplest and least costly way, avoiding unnecessary red tape.

Stakeholder engagement

Consulting stakeholders is at the heart of the better regulation agenda. The Commission offers citizens and stakeholders the opportunity to provide their feedback online over the entire lifecycle of a policy to collect evidence to support policymaking and ensure transparency.

Have your say: Public Consultations and Feedback portal 

How does it work?

  • stakeholders can share their views and evidence on proposals of new EU policies, legal acts and existing laws (evaluations and fitness checks)
  • it is multilingual, centralised, transparent and very easy to use
  • contributions feed into the decision-making process

The Commission’s approach to stakeholder engagement has been recognized as top of the class: in 2018 and 2021, the OECD ranked the EU’s it as the best among its members. 

Call for evidence and public consultation

The views, practical experience, evidence and data coming from stakeholders and the public help deliver higher quality and more robust policy initiatives and evaluations:

  • feedback to the call for evidence documents (for impact assessments, evaluations and fitness checks), open for a period of 4 weeks
  • a public consultation (for legislative acts), open for a period of 12 weeks

Both are in principle available in all official EU languages. Europeans can contribute in any of the 24 official EU languages and get the informal e-translation of all feedback comments and position papers into your own language.

Feedback

Citizens can also share their feedback with the Commission, by commenting on the proposals of the legal acts or delegated and implementing acts. The Commission then analyses and sums up the feedback and contributions received. This allows Europeans to see how their feedback contributes to the preparation of initiatives. Feedback on the draft legislative acts is shared with co-legislators (the European Parliament and the Council). 

 

Implementation dialogues and reality checks

Every Member of the European Commission will organise at least two implementation dialogues with stakeholders each year to align implementation of EU law with realities on the ground. They will provide a platform for open and transparent discussion between stakeholders. Through these dialogues, The Commission will work together with the stakeholders to identify obstacles to proper implementation. 

The Commission will also reach out to practitioners in companies through the reality checks, to understand their experience on the ground and the impact of EU law on their activities. This exchanges at the technical level will help identify and solve practical issues, hurdles or positive experiences, and how they relate to EU rules, implementation and national transposition. 

The outcome of the reality checks feed into the stress-testing of existing legislation (including evaluations and fitness checks) and the design of future simplification proposals.

Partnership and cooperation

The EU institutions working together

Improving EU law-making is a shared objective and the responsibility of all EU institutions and Member States. The best way to improve EU law-making and deliver better results is for the European Parliament, the Council of the European Union, and the European Commission to work more closely together.

The Commission can only determine the impact as well as the costs and savings associated with its own legislative proposals. Changes made during negotiations with the European Parliament and the Council may significantly alter impacts for people, business, or administrations. 

The Commission will relaunch the political dialogue with the European Parliament and the Council to discuss ideas, so that that all parties can assess impacts of their amendments in a common way and fulfil their commitments under the interinstitutional agreement on better law-making.

Implementation by Member States

The EU is built on commonly agreed rules. To provide a safe legal environment for citizens and businesses all over the EU, Member States must fully implement these rules in a timely fashion. They need to ensure that they are correctly applied and enforced to deliver the benefits they were intended for. Poor implementation creates costs and legal insecurity for people and businesses.

International cooperation

International regulatory cooperation is a key part of the EU regulatory policy. The Commission's better regulation policy has developed over the years and was also inspired by international developments, such various policy recommendations developed in the OECD. 

The Commission’s better regulation guidelines and toolbox specify how the international context should be considered when assessing and developing EU policy and how we consult with international partners and stakeholders. This covers, for instance, the requirement to take account of international treaties and agreements in our policy development, to address comprehensively geopolitical impacts, to notify legislative drafts to the World Trade Organization, mainstream the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals which are now included in evaluations and impact assessments, and more.