Brussels, 17 February 2025
Remarks by Commissioner Valdis Dombrovskis to the Mouvement des entreprises de France (Medef):
“Check against delivery”
Merci, Fabrice. Thank you for the invitation to join you today. It is a special honour to be here at the new Maison des Entreprises de France at the heart of the European quarter. It is a great symbol of your commitment to ensuring that the voice of French business is heard by European policymakers.
As a starting point, I would like to emphasise that the EU can no longer afford to continue with business as usual. This reality was made clear in last year’s Draghi report and every day by businesses such as yours. It also lies at the core of the political guidelines of the new Commission.
It is not just an economic reality. It goes much further. The freedoms and quality of life that we enjoy cannot be taken for granted amidst the changes that are taking place around us. Securing our prosperity and preserving our values depends more than ever on our ability to adapt, innovate, and compete.
This is why we must take decisive action to unleash the full potential of people and business in Europe. In this context, I was pleased to be appointed Commissioner for Implementation and Simplification.
Since my appointment, I have been engaging very intensely with all sort of stakeholders, including with companies such as those you represent, large and small.
What I have heard from you confirms our concerns. Today, regulation is seen by more than 60% of EU companies as an obstacle to investment, with 55% of small and medium-sized enterprises flagging regulatory obstacles and administrative burdens as their greatest challenge.
This is bad, not only for the individual companies whose investments and future are at stake, but also for Europe’s ability to innovate, drive technological and industrial change, set global standards and create good jobs. That is why it is so important that simplification becomes a priority for public authorities across Europe.
The new Commission has committed to an unprecedented simplification effort to reduce administrative burdens, and I am proud to be coordinating this work. As you are all aware, the EU is now emerging from a period of very intense regulatory activity. This was necessary to address the sweeping changes brought about by technological transformation and climate change. And I want to reassure you, our commitment to securing the green and digital transitions has not wavered.
However, it is clear that we need to be more mindful of how we get there. That is why we are now taking stock. We need to reflect and adjust where necessary to make our rules simpler and more effective.
We must avoid allowing the accumulation of administrative burdens on people and business impede us from reaching our objectives.
I would like to emphasise that simplification is not about deregulation. Neither is it an end in itself. Rather, it is an essential step for our productive sectors to expand and innovate, and for the creation of more and better opportunities for European citizens.
A vibrant economy is a necessary foundation upon which we can work to achieve our green, digital and social objectives.
Our simplification agenda seeks to ensure that European businesses spend much less time and resources complying with red tape, so that they can instead focus on what really matters: developing innovative ideas, putting them into motion in Europe and creating high-quality jobs.
We are committed to reducing regulatory burdens and deepening the Single Market to create a more supportive environment for companies — especially smaller businesses, startups, and scale-ups — to allow them to grow and thrive.
Beyond simplification, the Commission will propose other concrete initiatives like an EU start up and Scale Up strategy and the EU’s 28th regime to address barriers to market entry and allow companies operating in the EU to benefit from a harmonised set of business regulation.
This will complement our work to enhance innovation-driven economic growth. The Commission has already set out its strategy on how we hope to deliver our ambitious simplification agenda. Allow me to highlight some of the core principles that will guide our work.
First, we will give much more prominence to implementation at all stages of the policy cycle. This includes working with Member States and stakeholders very early on, to identify constraints, even before making legislative proposals. We will also apply stronger checks to avoid that new legislative proposals hurt our competitiveness or SMEs, and we will scrutinise delegated and implementing acts to avoid creating more costs.
Second, Commissioners will carry out implementation dialogues with stakeholders, at least twice a year, to identify what can be simplified and improved. In fact, a couple of weeks ago, I chaired a roundtable gathering practitioners to listen to feedback from the ground on ways to simplify sustainability reporting and due diligence rules. And our services will liaise with practitioners through reality checks to see what the application of EU rules entails on the ground. Not just in abstract, but in practice. These tools will help to identify what works and what does not, foster good practices and prepare new simplification measures.
Third, we are setting ambitious targets, unveiled already in the Competitiveness Compass: reducing administrative burdens by at least 25% for all companies and 35% for SMEs. Each Commissioner will be responsible for setting out a multi-year plan to stress test existing rules and deliver simplification measures. And we will report regularly on progress towards those targets and about the results achieved on the ground, in annual implementation and enforcement reports.
Taken together, these new rules should change the way in which the European Commission works. They signal a change in corporate and regulatory culture, focused on making sure that EU rules are as simple and cost-effective as possible, and that they deliver on the ground.
As you know, we will present the first in a series of simplification proposals in the coming weeks. The 2025 Commission Work Programme outlines a long set of proposals that will focus on simplification. This will start with a first Omnibus package on sustainability reporting, due diligence and taxonomy.
But, this is only the start. Our simplification efforts will continue over the course of the whole mandate. I look forward to continuing to engage with you throughout this journey.
Merci pour votre attention.
Source – EU Commission