On 16 March, the EU Commission published two communications to acknowledge the 30th anniversary of the Single Market and to present a strategy for enhancing the EU long-term competitiveness.

The Single Market Communication contains a description of successes in a number of areas as well as recent and planned initiatives to accelerate green and digital transition, but also to eliminate remaining barriers and deficiencies of implementation and enforcement of EU legislation in member states.

The ambition in the Competitiveness Communication is that regulations shall promote growth. It contains a description of initiatives and targets within nine areas of priority, such as research and innovation, digitalisation, financing and investment and international trade. Each area is accompanied by key performance indicators that will be used to follow-up if targets have been achieved. The Commission suggests, among other things, the introduction of a new competitiveness check, the development of a method for calculating cumulated effects, more frequent use of regulative sandboxes/testbeds, investigation of sunset and review clauses and simplified reporting obligations. Within the framework of the latter, the Commission plans to put forward the first proposals before autumn, within the green, digital and economic area, with the ambition to reduce administrative burdens by 25 percent.

For more information:
The single market at 30 (europa.eu)
Long-term competitiveness of the EU looking beyond 2030 | European Commission (europa.eu)