European Commission finally presented “Better regulation Package”
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On 19 May 2015, the European Commission (EC) adopted the so-called Better Regulation Package. First Vice President of the European Commission and Commissioner for Better Regulation, Frans Timmermans, presented the package in the European Parliament in Strasbourg.
According to the EC the reform package aims to generate more transparency in the EU decision-making process while increasing the quality of new laws. The EC believes to achieve these results amongst others by introducing impact assessments of draft legislation but also continuous verification of already existing EU legislation. In this context, a key issue of the new regulation package is the foreseen "Regulatory Scrutiny Board". This board will be established to scrutinize new legislative acts and existing legislation. It will gather a chairperson, three EC members and three external experts. For ETUCE, this raises questions over the selection procedure of this limited group of board members who will apparently have such an important role to play in future European policy developing processes.
Also, the EC intends to establish the so-called Regulatory Performance and Fitness Programme (REFIT) platform gathering a large number of stakeholders including social partners from all EU member states but also representatives from the businesses, civil society, the Economic and Social Committee, the Committee of Regions and Member States. The platform will be expected to develop fresh ideas to deliver "better regulation" as Timmermans calls it, with the view to minimalize regulatory and administrative difficulties. At the same time, stakeholders shall always be able get involved through the public consultation tool "Lighten the Load – Have Your Say".
ETUCE has serious doubts as to whether these measures will really reduce rather than increase bureaucracy. ETUCE is particularly concerned about the future role and impact of the European sectoral social dialogue on developing issues which are entirely of sectoral concern. "We must not ignore the fact that European sectoral social partners get to the very heart of the matters relevant to their sector which they know best.", says ETUCE European Director Martin Rømer today in Brussels. "Therefore, the European sectoral social dialogue must be protected and even strengthened. In ETUCE, we currently fear that the so-called reform package will come along with changes which will seriously endanger the social dialogue's position rather than to support it. We still do hope that the European Commission is serious about its recent commitments to social dialogue and that President Juncker did not just pay lip service to the public when he stated that he wanted to become a 'President of social dialogue'. The EC would be well advised to listen to the constructive criticism raised so far. European citizens do rightly expect EU decision processes to be most transparent and efficient and less bureaucratic. However, we cannot accept that this entire process might also lead to deregulation and endanger the valuable high social and labour standards that we have been used to."
Find all relevant information here ,
Information on the Impact Assessment Requirements for social partner here