Committee on Legal Affairs – Extraordinary Meeting

07:20 - 08:36

Jörgen Warborn

The government is there for businesses and citizens. It's not the other way around. Businesses and citizens are not there for the government, and that's why I think this principle clicks on the right triggers, the right buttons, so to speak.

So I'm calling for this again. And then of course this is not only about simplification it is also a report about proportionality and subsidiarity and of course we are mentioning this as well and make sure that the decision are taking at a proportionate level and as close as citizens as possible. Mr. Chair to finalize there is also a call for impact assessment and also to ourselves when there are substantive amendments we have to think about making impact assessment on them. There is a regulatory scrutiny board mention and how this has can be strengthened and then a think small first principle that should be applied at all stages so that the SMEs do not carry the heaviest burden in this. And with that Mr. Chair I think I leave the next five seconds over to you.

08:36 - 08:46

Ilhan Kyuchyuk

Thank you so much. Now I would like to give the floor to shadow rapporteur starting with Tiemo Wölken for S&D. Tiemo?

08:46 - 10:54

Tiemo Wölken

Yeah thank you very much and indeed better regulation is not a nice to have but it is a comprehensive agenda to make sure that our laws fulfill the highest standards. Personally I find the developments of the last few years in this context indeed very worrying. The Commission often rushes out proposals and they they appear to be in urgency so which means they often lack substantive impact assessments or consultations entirely and this is really not a good development. So it is completely unacceptable for us that the Commission appears to have abandoned any serious effort of maintaining better regulation principles. Instead the urgency procedure is being misused and Parliament makes itself unfortunately too often complicit by accepting frankly badly drafted legislative proposals as the basis for our work.

And let's be honest here the Commission's proposals one omnibus after another promising it will cut billions of euros of costs but really what is the basis for these claims? Omnibus or not we should not have to work on proposals without a solid foundation of evidence. The EU used to take pride in the structured legislative process but unfortunately under this Commission President the legislative process has developed into a screaming match between competing industry lobbies trying to squeeze their wish list into the next badly drafted omnibus scheduled for departure. So what we need is a proper relaunch of better regulation practices and a deep look at the maladministration findings by the European Ombudsman. This should really be the central point of this report.

Let's hold the Commission to account for its bad practices and make sure that the EU returns to what it does best evidence-based policy making that delivers for its people. And I use the five seconds of yours.

10:54 - 11:03

Ilhan Kyuchyuk

Thank you for for your generosity this morning. Next is Pascal Arimont for PPE? No. Tobiasz Bocheński for ECR.

11:03 - 13:12

Tobiasz Bocheński

Thank you Mr. Chair I'm going to speak in Polish. Po pierwsze dziękuję bardzo panu posłowi Warbornowi za przygotowanie tego draftu. Zawiera bardzo wiele bardzo istotnych spostrzeżeń w szczególności pewne istotne podkreślenie faktu że pieniądze nie rosną na drzewach tylko biorą się z pracy i biorą się z pracy w małych średnich przedsiębiorstwach.

I przy tworzeniu prawa unijnego mieliśmy do czynienia przez lata z założeniem, iż legislacja działa w próżni w oparciu tylko pewne wyidealizowane abstrakcyjne idee, które nie biorą pod uwagę warunków ekonomicznych. I zawarte w tym raporcie spostrzeżenia są bardzo bliskie mojemu sercu i moim spostrzeżeniom zarówno jako prawnika, jak i po prostu polityka. Mamy do czynienia z jednej strony z inflacją prawa, nadregulacją, bardzo skrupulatnymi, pogłębionymi rozwiązaniami prawnymi o charakterze administracyjno-prawnym w gruncie rzeczy, a z drugiej strony z brakiem aktywności Komisji w swojej inicjatywie upraszczania prawa i sprawiania, żeby prawo było skuteczne tam, gdzie jest potrzebne. Wszystkie działania właśnie harmonizacyjne, wymuszające na państwach członkowskich pewne wspólne jednolite standardy, do których powinniśmy dążyć, aby osiągnąć prawdziwy wspólny rynek, są zaniedbane ze strony Komisji Europejskiej. Za to z drugiej strony bezustanne dokładanie obowiązków, ciężarów, obowiązków raportowania, nowych formularzy, nowych terminów, niejasnych pojęć, do których trzeba dokładać kolejnych definicji prawnych, tworzy gigantyczny galimatias prawny, którego powinniśmy się pozbyć i mam nadzieję, że ten raport zmierza właśnie w tę stronę.

Dziękuję.

13:12 - 13:15

Ilhan Kyuchyuk

Thank you. Next is Mr. Žalimas.

13:15 - 15:43

Dainius Žalimas

Thank you, Chair. Dear colleagues, first of all, I would like to congratulate our rapporteur and thank him for presenting this draft report. I think you have taken on a very important agenda. Simple and clear lawmaking is indispensable and goes hand in hand with simplification. We cannot achieve one without the other.

This is particularly important for businesses, which above all need clarity and predictability, yet we increasingly find ourselves changing legislation that we adopted only recently. Sometimes this is necessary, but it should also make us to ask whether the original rules were sufficiently well thought through and tested in the first place. There is much in the report that I welcome, particularly the emphasis on simplicity by design, a stronger impact assessment, addressing gold plating and real world testing. I will also table some amendments to emphasize a few additional points. First, better regulation should mean better impact assessment, not fewer impact assessments.

This is particularly relevant for omnibus packages, where simplification involves substantive policy changes, these should remain evidence-based and where appropriate subject to proper impact assessment. The same applies to public consultation, where they should provide stakeholders with genuine opportunity to participate and reflect different perspectives. Second, we already have an extensive better regulation framework. The challenge is to ensure that it is consistently applied. Derogations should remain genuinely exceptional and properly justified.

In particular, we should be careful with overly broad grounds for urgency, such as general reference to the political context, which could too easily allow normal better regulation requirements to be bypassed. Third, I welcome the Commission's regulatory deep cleaning initiative and I think we should support it with clear indicators to assess its results.

This would allow us to measure success not simply by how many legal acts or reporting requirements are removed, but by whether unnecessary compliance costs are actually reduced, competitiveness improves, and legislation becomes easier to apply. Mr. Chairman, I'll give you a couple of more seconds, but please slow down for the sake of interpretation. Thank you. Overall, I welcome the report as a good basis for our work.

15:43 - 15:56

Ilhan Kyuchyuk

I was late. Okay, that was it from the shadows. Does any other member wish to speak? That is not the case, so... Yeah, Mr. Mantovani, prego, Mario.

15:56 - 17:54

Mario Mantovani

Sì, grazie presidente. Volevo anch'io ringraziare il relatore Warborn che anche questa volta mi pare che colga il punto giusto. Cioè, relazioni come queste sono fondamentali perché sulle micro, piccole e medie imprese manca un'attenzione sistemica. La Commissione dice di condividere sempre il principio "pensare innanzitutto in piccolo", ma poi propone norme uniche a prescindere dalla dimensione delle imprese, con nuovi oneri uguali per tutti. Ce lo dice lo SMEunited: le regole sono scritte per 43.000 grandi imprese, ma devono rispettarle 24 milioni di microimprese o affidarsi a esenzioni che nella pratica non funzionano.

E intanto i mercati si muovono: investitori, fondi, private banker guardano sempre più alla piccola e media impresa dove vedono margini di crescita maggiori. La nostra legislazione però non prepara il terreno e si perde in una regolamentazione preventiva e complessa che scoraggia chi vuole investire. Apprezzo le due proposte più concrete del relatore: lo studio sulla compensazione dei costi di rendicontazione e le verifiche sul campo con imprese ed enti locali. Io aggiungerei due emendamenti che presenterò. Nel primo, nessun obbligo senza strumenti pronti, cioè nessuna norma si applichi prima che siano disponibili le linee guida, modelli standard proporzionali alla dimensione aziendale e agli strumenti per rispettarla.

E secondo, e chiudo, per le imprese in buona fede la prima irregolarità dia luogo a un termine per regolarizzarsi prima di qualsiasi sanzione e ad un supporto dell'autorità competente. Grazie.

17:54 - 18:02

Ilhan Kyuchyuk

Grazie. I think that was it from the speakers. The floor goes to the rapporteur, Mr. Warborn, for your concluding remarks.

18:02 - 18:28

Jörgen Warborn

Thank you, thank you Chair, and thank you to all colleagues who took the floor. I think there is a lot of commonalities here. We have all mentioned simplicity, we have mentioned the impact assessment and how we can work with that, and the "think small" principle is there. So, and it seems that you have some interesting amendments as well, so I look very much forward to taking this report further. Thank you.

18:28 - 18:58

Ilhan Kyuchyuk

Thank you, Mr. Warborn. The deadline for amendments is set a week from now, so exactly 15th of October at 12:00. Any other business, dear colleagues? No, that is not the case. And the next meeting is here in Strasbourg on 19th of October at 7:30 PM, 19:30, together with LIBE, it would be a joint meeting.

Thank you very much, dear colleagues, for this morning.