A promise to improve Europe’s business climate

The European Commission of José Manuel Barroso has promised to improve the climate for European business by better law-making.

It is a challenge that is being championed by Günter Verheugen, the commissioner for enterprise and competitiveness, but the obligation to improve is being placed on all parts of the Commission and co-ordinated by the secretariat-general.

Catherine Day, the secretary-general of the Commission, has nearly 30 years’ experience inside the administration. She knows more than most about the pluses and minuses of EU lawmaking. Speaking at a European Policy Centre breakfast meeting last week, Day assured her audience that the EU’s renewed better regulation drive was working. "It is changing the culture inside the Commission," she said. The Commission was in a process of simplifying, streamlining and codifying legislation to get rid of overlaps, she added.

A crucial element in the approach was an emphasis on higher quality impact assessments which enabled the Commission to "work out the best solution to sets of problems". Higher standards for impact assessments were making the Commission "come up with better proposals", which Day said she hoped would be "irresistible to the Council [of Ministers] and the European Parliament". Day said that she hoped the two other institutions would take the better regulation agenda to heart. In particular, they should take impact assessments into account when they amended Commission proposals.

Day drew attention to the irony of EU leaders having agreed to sign up to a target of reducing the regulatory burden of EU legislation by 25% by 2012 but holding off on matching the Commission’s ambition for cutting the red-tape of their own national legislation. They have agreed to set "ambitious national targets" by 2008. "It says a lot when the Commission has to put pressure on member states to cut red-tape," Day said mischievously.

The Commission secretary-general rejected suggestions that the better regulation agenda meant that the Commission was less productive than before. "There is a myth that we are not legislating," she said, pointing out that on average over the last ten years the Commission had presented 489 legislative proposals. In 2006 it had come forward with 474 proposals. It was less but not a lot less, she said. Day pointed out that the Commission was now legislating in new areas such as justice and home affairs in which the EU had not been active ten years ago. There might be less harmonising legislation, she said, but this was because many policy areas were "very mature".

She also dismissed suggestions that the Commission was in danger of self-censorship in discussing proposals with member states before presenting them. It would be "unthinkable" for the Commission to launch new initiatives without having assessed how the member states would react. Getting proposals agreed required a lot of time to identify problems and find solutions, she said. "You can either do it at the beginning [of the process] or you do it afterwards," she said. But, she stressed, this approach did not mean the Commission had lowered its level of ambition. At the same time, "there’s no point being so ambitious that no one follows you", she said.

The European Commission of José Manuel Barroso has promised to improve the climate for European business by better law-making.

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