GRTU welcomes Commission’s new approach to Better Regulation

GRTU welcomes the new strategy on better regulation aimed at delivering better rules with better results. The Better Regulation Agenda was adopted by the European Commission on the 19th of May and it was both drafted and announced by First Vice President Timmermans.

GRTU believes this is an important step forward in improving regulation as a way of ensuring that the burdens on the economy are kept to the minimum, and the scope for business to create new jobs and growth broadened.

SMEs play the important role of fostering competitiveness, innovation, purchasing power and employment. This however can only be achieved if regulation strikes the right balance of effectiveness and avoids burdens for which consumers have to pay for out of their pockets, and from which business have fewer resources to create new jobs.

99% of businesses are SMEs, on whom regulation bears particularly heavily. GRTU has long campaigned for a high quality regulatory framework with evidence-based legislation and a rigorous application of the SME test. We are happy to see that the Commission will take a proactive approach to the needs of SMEs, and require timely consultation at each stage of proposing legislation, and explanation of how they have taken account of views expressed.

Regulation needs to be appropriate for all businesses, big and small.

The idea of inception impact assessment, allowing stakeholder input from the earliest stages of considering new legislation, the new consultative tool “Lighten the Load – Have Your Say” and the new REFIT stakeholder platform are particularly welcome in this respect.

A vital part of the package for business is the new push to eliminate member states’ gold-plating the implementation of EU legislation.

Gold-plating has a double effect on costs for business, and thus for consumers: it adds costs to compliance with those specific national rules, and by fragmenting the single market, creates additional inefficiencies which again, the consumer ends up paying for.

GRTU looks forward to see it fully implemented at national level and we augur that the Commission will use all instruments at its disposal, including national surveys and the European Semester, to address these obstacles to realising the potential of the single market to the full.

We hope that The European Parliament and Council will commit to pursuing better regulation and assessing the impact on the wider economy of the decisions they take. We therefore hope that they will embrace Vice-President Timmermans’ initiative of a new Inter-Institutional Agreement on better regulation.