Regulatory burdens remain one of the most pressing obstacles facing businesses in the European Union and its Member States. The reports by Enrico Letta and Mario Draghi underscore what companies have long been signalling: Europe must urgently cut regulatory burden and confront bureaucracy at both EU and national levels if it is to remain globally competitive and attract investment. Today’s geo-political tensions also require immediate and bold action to safeguard our economic power that is a pre-requisite for Europe’s security.

The European business community strongly welcomes the growing focus across the EU institutions on competitiveness and regulatory burden reduction – however, much more must be done. To strengthen Europe’s economic base, the EU must go beyond merely reducing excessive bureaucracy of existing legislation: it should urgently cut the overall compliance costs, remove barriers to cross-border business in the Single Market, and ensure that new incoming legislation does not undermine these efforts by adding further regulatory burden. It is one pre-requisite to create jobs and incentivise investment in Europe.

In light of this, the European business community is consolidating its efforts to ensure that businesses’ perspectives and proposals are brought to the forefront of the political debate. To this end, we have established a dedicated business gateway to regulatory burden reduction proposals, entitled “Cutting the clutter: Proposals to reduce regulatory burden for business”.

This gateway serves as a single access point to concrete, evidence-based input into the EU’s regulatory burden reduction agenda pursued by policy-makers. Its overarching purpose is to contribute to a longer-term and more impactful agenda for burden reduction and regulatory simplification.