Fit for Future platform selects EU initiatives for simplification and modernisation

This article is brought to you in association with the European Commission.

The Commission’s Fit for Future Platform has now selected 15 initiatives with the aim of helping to simplify EU law, cut red tape for citizens and businesses, and ensure that EU policies respond to new and emerging challenges. These efforts will be part of the Platform’s first annual work programme to be adopted this month.

Maroš Šefčovič, Vice-President for Interinstitutional Relations and Foresight and Chairman of the Fit for Future Platform, said: “Simplification has become more important than ever, as we seek to kick-start Europe’s economy, hit by the pandemic. So even though our regulatory policy is recognised as one of the best in the world, we can still do better. We must ensure that EU laws provide the intended benefits for the economy and society, while simplifying existing legislation, reducing burden wherever possible and staying forward-looking. This can have real effects on the ground.”

The Platform will issue opinions on the 15 selected topics, covering a broad range of sectors from competition, finance, health, environment, statistics and transport, to customs and internal market. These opinions will enrich the analysis by the Commission, and inform its evaluations and impact assessments.

The Platform will consider the following guiding principles in issuing its opinions:

• Digitalisation: Helping businesses to take up digital solutions and accelerating public sector modernisation to reduce regulatory burdens.
• Efficient labelling, authorisation and reporting obligations: Identifying bottlenecks due to disparities across Member States, striving to simplify procedures to facilitate investment in future infrastructure and innovation, and striking the right balance between reporting efforts and performance assessment of EU legislation to help small and medium-sized enterprises, in particular.
• Simplification of EU legislation: Ensuring that EU laws are predictable, unambiguous and avoid overlaps in different areas.

Have Your Say: Simplify!

All citizens and stakeholders are invited to contribute to the work of the Platform via the Have Your Say – Simplify! portal. Ideas for simplification and burden reduction in each of the 15 selected topics, received by 30 April 2021, will be considered by the Platform in preparing its 2021 opinions. Other suggestions will be taken into account for the preparation of the 2022 annual work programme.

Background

The Commission has a commitment to simplify existing EU law and to reduce unnecessary costs as part of its regulatory fitness and performance (REFIT) programme.

The new Fit for Future Platform gathers practical expertise in various policy areas from national, regional and local authorities, the Committee of the Regions, the European Economic and Social Committee and stakeholders. Its opinions will feed directly into the Commission’s ongoing work to simplify existing EU laws, reduce unnecessary burdens and to ensure that Union policies are forward-looking and relevant in light of new and emerging challenges.

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