Reducing regulatory burden to restore the EU’s competitive edge

Introductory remarks

The first year of the “Omnibus” proposals for regulatory simplification is over. BusinessEurope is meeting this milestone with our support to the Commission’s efforts and our third batch of 44 suggestions for regulatory burden reduction in 9 policy areas as contribution to the Commission’s agenda on reducing regulatory burdens. This third batch of suggestions comes on top of BusinessEurope’s publications of the 68 suggestions published on 22 January 2025 and the 29 suggestions dedicated to digital regulations, published on 17 July 2025. We are putting forward new proposals on additional legal acts for consideration as well as those already included in the previous packages where new aspects have been identified.

The few measures bearing an asterisk mark are those which BusinessEurope has not been actively working on, still put forward by our united members as very relevant for the burden reduction programme.

The key pressing burdens are concentrated in the regulations on:

• International value chains and trade
• Consumer policy
• Energy
• Environmental policy
• Circular economy
• Employment and social policy
• Financial services and reporting
• Taxation
• Other

We structured the identified 44 burdens around 3 pillars of origin of disproportionate compliance costs: administrative burdens (including reporting requirements), excessive compliance costs and cross-border regulatory barriers (the Single Market angle).