Honourable Chair, Honourable Members of the European Economic and Social Committee.
Thank you for the opportunity to join you today.
In the European Commission's new mandate, I have been given the responsibility for driving and coordinating work on our simplification agenda.
I will therefore focus my remarks today on the strong simplification dimension of the Work Programme, our Communication on implementation and simplification and our first Omnibus proposals.
But first, allow me to begin by setting out the bigger picture.
The world is changing in front of our eyes.
And Europe must change with it.
The freedoms that we enjoy and the values that we cherish can no longer be taken for granted in a complex and more conflictual world.
For the EU, this also depends on maintaining and further developing our economic base by adapting, innovating, and competing effectively in the world.
If we fail to take the necessary action now, we will increasingly be at the mercy of our international competitors and risk the freedoms and quality of life that we take for granted today.
This is why the Commission has prioritised enhancing Europe's competitiveness in this new mandate.
Cutting red tape is an important element of building a competitive Europe.
The past five years were a period of intense regulatory activity.
This has generated a large and still expanding regulatory burden.
As we take stock, we see that this accumulation of rules, and their increased complexity, are problems in themselves.
Today, regulation is seen by more than 60% of EU companies as an obstacle to investment and 55% of SMEs flag regulatory obstacles and administrative burdens as their greatest challenge.
These businesses are Europe's economic engine.
Overwhelming them with a high volume of regulatory demands serves to freeze innovation, deter investment and put jobs at risk.
This in turn makes our citizens less prosperous and undermines our ability to achieve our economic, social and environmental goals.
Now that that I have spoken about what simplification is, I would like to touch briefly on what it is not.
The EESC resolution adopted in December 2024, as input to the Commission Work Programme, calls for policies that are socially inclusive and environmentally sustainable, and lead to an economically prosperous EU.
The Commission fully adheres to those goals, including when it comes to our simplification agenda.
I want to be very clear today: simplification is not about deregulation.
We are not in the business of undermining the EU's high standards or engaging in any kind of race to the bottom.
Rather, we are acting to ensure that our rules remain proportionate, effective and properly implemented.
Our economic, social or environmental goals have not changed.
This is precisely to better achieve those objectives that we are engaging in our simplification agenda.
Simplification is about making sure that our rules help deliver – rather than impede – the achievement of our economic, social, environmental and security goals.
It is about achieving those goals more effectively and more efficiently, in a smarter and less burdensome way.
While the challenge is great, the level of our ambition is equal to it.
We have set ambitious targets to reduce all administrative costs by 25% for all companies and 35% for SMEs.
This translates into cutting roughly €37.5 billion in annual administrative costs by the end of this Commission's mandate.
So, moving to the practical: how exactly do we plan to implement our simplification agenda?
Following from last year's Draghi Report, the Commission issued the Competitiveness Compass in January.
This acts as our strategic roadmap to restore Europe's dynamism and spur economic growth, including through simplifying rules and reducing regulatory burdens to attract investment.
The Commission's 2025 Work Programme sets out our flagship initiatives the Commission intends to adopt in 2025 to deliver on its priorities.
I would like to thank the EESC for its contribution to the Work Programme, as tabled in the Resolution adopted in December 2024.
The Commission's work programme contains 18 legislative initiatives, 11 of which are geared towards simplification.
This demonstrates how high simplification is on our list of priorities.
So, the main simplification proposals for 2025 are the following:
- A first omnibus proposal on sustainability reporting, which we already presented last month and to which I will return in a moment.
- Investment simplification, facilitating the deployment and reporting of InvestEU and the European Fund for Strategic Investments.
- Looking forward, a package including a new definition of small mid-caps, so that they can benefit from more targeted proportionate requirements.
- A digital package to ensure a simplified and more agile means to facilitate once-only reporting to avoid duplications.
- A proposal to reduce complexity and administrative burden for farmers and national administrations in the context of the common agricultural policy.
- An omnibus proposal to further simplify rules in the defence sector. By this way, this one is not reflected in Work Programme, but is well in the pipeline.
Earlier this year, the Commission adopted our overall strategy on implementation and simplification for the next five years, entitled "A simpler and faster Europe".
It is constructed around four building blocks:
- ensuring EU policies deliver results,
- making Europe simpler and faster,
- improving the way we make new rules,
- and strengthening our work with co-legislators and stakeholders.
Taken together, these four blocks signal a change in the regulatory culture of the European Commission, focusing on making sure that EU rules are as simple and cost-effective as possible, and that they deliver on the ground.
Notably, it provides for each Commissioner stress-testing the EU acquis under their remit, with the aim to reviewing the whole acquis by the end of the current mandate.
And actually, our work programme has an annex on stress-testing.
Stress-testing should result in simplification measures and an annual programme of evaluations and fitness to identify further opportunities for simplification.
On the fourth block, strengthening our work with co-legislators and stakeholders, I would like to stress that simplification is a joint effort that requires close cooperation with Member States, and EU institutions and bodies.
In this respect, we hope to count on the expertise and support of the EESC so that we can deliver changes that make a real difference.
As I have mentioned, the Commission has already presented the first two Omnibus proposals to simplify EU rules at the end of last month.
The Omnibus package covers a far-reaching simplification in the fields of sustainability reporting, sustainability due-diligence and taxonomy.
The Omnibus package on investment simplification facilitates, amongst others, the deployment and reporting of InvestEU and the European Fund for Strategic Investments, and simplifies reporting.
These packages have marked a strong start to delivering our simplification agenda.
They will deliver far-reaching simplification, as we had promised, while preserving the objectives of each piece of legislation.
When adopted, these proposals will bring –at a conservative estimate - €6.3 billion in annual savings to businesses and leverage €50 billion in investments.
Our proposals also show that simpler rules can go hand in hand with better meeting our regulatory objectives.
Take, for instance, the changes that we have proposed on corporate due diligence.
We are making sure that companies focus their efforts where they matter the most, across their supply chains when there is indication of possible problems, instead of relying on a subjective analysis.
We are convinced that changes such as this one will not only increase legal certainty and reduce costs for companies, but also make our due diligence rules more effective.
Both sets of proposals are now with the co-legislators.
So, the Commission hopes for speedy adoption with possible further improvements.
This is just the start.
Our simplification efforts will continue throughout the entire mandate.
To conclude, the EESC's expertise and contributions will play an important role in helping to optimise the quality of our simplification proposals.
With that in mind, I stop here and look forward to our exchange.
