European Commission work programme 2025 and communication on implementation and simplification

The European Commission has recently launched several initiatives to improve and simplify EU legislation in order to reduce the regulatory burden of companies and enhance EU competitiveness.

At the end of January, the Commission launched the ”Competitiveness Compass”, providing a strategic framework for the Commisson’s work to strengthen the competitiveness of the EU. In February, the Commission published its work programme for 2025. The programme has a strong focus on simplification and burden reduction for companies – important elements to facilitate entrepreneurship and increase competitiveness.

The work programme contains 51 new policy initiatives, 37 evaluations or fitness checks and 123 pending proposals. According to the Commission, 11 out of 18 legislative initiatives have an explicit simplification objective or a significant simplification dimension. These include several planned omnibus packages in areas such as sustainability reporting, agricultural policy and defence, which will contribute to the ambition of reducing administrative burdens with at least 35 percent for small and medium sized companies. 37 pending proposals are to be withdrawn.

The work programme is accompanied by a communication on implementation and simplification in which the Commission commits to, among other things:

• regularly screen the stock of legislation to identify simplification potential, e.g. overlapping legislation, consolidation and reduced costs
• conduct more, and better, impact assessments to legislative proposals, with particular focus on SME and competitiveness checks
• reduce the number of delegated and implementing acts, and to a larger extent assess impacts of these
• conduct implementation dialogues with stakeholders and implementation strategies with member states to avoid over-implementation, fragmentisation and inefficient implementation
• assist member states to achieve efficient implementation, e.g. through the technical support instrument
• conduct stress tests and reality checks to ensure that legislation is fit for purpose
• introduce annual progress reports, to be presented for other institutions and to serve as starting point for further simplification

The Commission underlines the shared responsibility between EU institutions and member states. It encourages the Council and the Parliament not to propose amendments that increase costs for companies, and to conduct impact assessment for the substantial amendments they propose. A common methodology for this is suggested.

Read more
The Commission Work Programme 2025 External link.
Communication on implementation and simplification External link.
The Competitiveness Compass External link.