The Council has today adopted Council conclusions endorsing an initiative by the Danish Presidency tasking ministers in the so-called COMPET and ECOFIN Council formations to monitor and discuss the benefits and costs for businesses and public administrations from proposed EU legislation under negotiation across all policy areas and Council formations. The objective is to attain the intended benefits with a minimum of costs and burdens. The Council also agreed that the monitoring and discussions will be based on a table providing an overview of economic consequences of EU proposals.
Stephanie Lose, Denmark’s minister for Economic Affairs and president of the Economic and Financial Affairs Council (ECOFIN), says:
A new EU working method with monitoring based on an overview is crucial to minimize costs, while attaining the intended benefits, and to deliver on the EU’s burden reduction target. We need to ensure that added burdens from the flow of new proposals do not outweigh the reduced burdens from the simplification packages addressing the stock of existing EU legislation. We get nowhere, if we reduce existing burdens with one hand, while we introduce new burdens with the other hand.
Until now, European policymakers have lacked a basic overview of the economic consequences of new EU legislation as EU institutions have not systematically monitored the costs and benefits of EU proposals being negotiated.
Marie Bjerre, Denmark’s minister for European Affairs and president of the General Affairs Council (GAC), where the Council conclusions where formally adopted today, says:
The Danish Presidency has cut unnecessary rules and bureaucracy in many areas, but the job is not finished. The task now is to ensure continuity beyond our Presidency. The adoption of the Council conclusions on simplification and better regulation will help anchor a sustained focus on the economic impacts of new EU legislation and provide a clear path for future work on better regulation and burden reduction, for the benefit of European Businesses and of Europe.
The innovation proposed by the Danish Presidency can help address a European problem that was pointed out in the 2024 Draghi Report, namely that the flow of new regulation in the EU is growing faster than in other comparable economies, and that efforts to reduce the stock and the flow have had limited impact so far. The issue has also been raised by the European Council, which in its October conclusions called for efforts at all levels ‘to drastically reduce, as a matter of urgency, administrative, regulatory and reporting burdens for businesses, including SMEs, and public administrations’, urged the Commission and the co-legislators to ‘avoid over-regulation and the introduction of new administrative burdens, in particular on SMEs, throughout the legislative and implementation processes at all levels’, and called for ‘legislative and regulatory self-restraint’.
The overview shows that for European businesses adopting the proposals in the pipeline will – in addition to substantial one-off costs – add new recurrent administrative costs of around EUR 1.4-1.5 billion and recurrent adjustment costs of roughly EUR 11.9-19.6 billion. For public authorities adopting these proposals will add around EUR 119-140 million in recurrent administrative costs and EUR 2.1-9.2 billion in recurrent adjustment costs in addition to significant one-off costs. Total costs could be underestimated as estimates are sometimes non-existing or only partial. The overview relies on all data on proposal under negotiation up until 8 October 2025. The overview relies on public data in the impact assessments of individual legal proposals made by the Commission.
The Competitiveness Council (COMPET) discussed the issue of increasing burdens form EU-legislation and what structural changes are needed to reduce burdens during the Council deliberation on their meeting 8 December. At Economic and Financial Affairs Council (ECOFIN) 12 December, Member States generally endorsed the overview table and had their first discussion on the economic consequences of EU legislation based on the overview table.
The Council conclusions stipulate that:
