- Europe
- News Desk
- Source: European Commission https://ec.europa.eu/commission/presscorner/detail/en/speech_26_2273
The European Commission's twelve major Omnibus simplification proposals could save European businesses and national administrations €22.3 billion per year once fully implemented, Commissioner Valdis Dombrovskis said at the eighth annual conference of the Regulatory Scrutiny Board. Speaking at the Brussels event, the commissioner placed simplification at the centre of the EU executive's competitiveness agenda.
Key facts
Why is simplification the priority now?
- European Commissioner Valdis Dombrovskis addressed the eighth annual conference of the Regulatory Scrutiny Board.
- The Commission has tabled twelve major Omnibus simplification proposals across a broad range of policy areas.
- The proposals could save European businesses and national administrations €22.3 billion per year once fully implemented.
- The Commission's Better Regulation strategy rests on five pillars, including "simplicity by design" and action against gold-plating.
- The Regulatory Scrutiny Board has had its scrutiny remit extended to a wider range of assessments supporting policy proposals.
Dombrovskis told the conference that policymakers face increasingly complex and interconnected problems, and that the right response is to return to fundamental questions about what a proposal is meant to solve and whether EU-level rules are genuinely needed.
He said answering those questions properly requires sound evidence, reliable data and rigorous analysis, because a law shapes citizens' lives, business operations and market functioning once adopted, sometimes for decades. Poorly understood trade-offs, he added, carry a real price and can hold back jobs, growth and Europe's economic strength. What does the Commission say about future lawmaking?
According to the commissioner, the simplification agenda is not only about revisiting existing rules but also about how regulation is approached in future. He argued that preventing unnecessary complexity at the drafting stage is always preferable to removing it after it has become embedded in legislation.
That, he said, is where the Regulatory Scrutiny Board comes in, with its independent scrutiny helping to ensure that the Commission's choices rest on robust evidence and a clear grasp of likely consequences. He acknowledged that the Board continues to identify weaknesses in core elements of impact assessments, including problem definition, use of available data, identification of credible policy options, assessment of impacts and demonstration of proportionality.
"These are clearly not peripheral details," Dombrovskis said. "Rather, they go to the heart of whether our proposals are necessary, effective and proportionate."
He thanked the Board's chair and members for their independence, professionalism and commitment to improving the quality of EU policymaking, saying their added value is reflected in the Board's 2025 Annual Report. What are the five pillars of the strategy?
The commissioner set out the Commission's recent Better Regulation strategy, which he said raises the level of ambition for lawmaking in Europe and modernises how EU laws are designed, implemented and enforced.
Its five pillars are simplicity built into proposals from the earliest design stage; a regulatory "deep cleaning" to tackle fragmented rules and overlapping provisions; action against gold-plating, where member states add stricter or wider rules than EU law requires, creating barriers and fragmenting the Single Market; faster and more robust enforcement of EU law; and strengthening the EU's better regulation system.
The final pillar has already affected the Board's work, according to Dombrovskis. More initiatives will be accompanied by an impact assessment, and a "matrix of key impacts" has been introduced to make those assessments more focused and more relevant to policymakers. The Board's quality-control role has also been extended to a wider range of assessments backing policy proposals.
Gold-plating is a long-standing concern for the single market, since national additions to EU rules can raise costs for companies operating across borders and complicate compliance for smaller firms. The Commission's stated aim is to keep EU action justified, proportionate and effective.
Dombrovskis closed by saying the Board will continue to play a vital role in the Commission's work, thanking the conference organisers and wishing participants a productive event. He said he looked forward to hearing ideas on how to keep raising the quality of EU lawmaking.
Source: European Commission
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