Frustration about the slow speed of simplification is mounting – and not just from businesses. EU leaders are calling to speed up cutting red tape, and Mario Draghi has warned against complacency on simplification. “To carry on as usual” would be “to resign ourselves to falling behind.”
I get the frustration. The urgency is real. But should we be surprised about the “slow” pace? Not if we understand how EU laws are made.
Reality check
Let’s look at the numbers. Take the flagship file from the Omnibus I package on sustainability published in February – the committee report was adopted on Monday, 13 October. From the publication of the legislative proposal to the committee vote: 229 days (7 ½ months).
This might sound like an eternity. But compare it to the baseline: for this type of legislation, the average timeline is 317 days (10 ½ months) to the committee report, with a median of 280 days. This supposedly “stuck” simplification package is still moving faster than most EU legislative proposals.
A second law, aimed at simplifying the Carbon Border Adjustment Mechanism (CBAM), was published in the Official Journal on 17 October, taking 233 days from proposal to final law. To put that in perspective, during the last mandate, only a quarter of the laws (that underwent trilogues) made it through in under 450 days – the average was 803 days. Which means the CBAM law was practically speeding.
Another example: The final law in this simplification package, which pushed back application dates, was adopted via the urgency procedure: just 49 days from publication of the proposal to publication of the final law.
While not record-breaking, this is very quick considering the politics involved. Even less controversial laws where speed mattered took longer – like various temporary Covid relief measures. Or take the Act in Support of Ammunition Production to help Ukraine, which took 82 days until publication in the EU rulebook.
Would we all like it faster? Absolutely.
There’s no question that urgent simplification is needed. Too many laws are overly complex and are proving difficult to implement. The cost of delay is real.
But the EU legislative process, as we are painfully discovering, is not designed to rapidly fix experiments. This makes better law-making all the more urgent. We need to thoroughly consider impacts, implementation and cumulative costs before we put legislation on the books – not trying to patch things up after.
Bottom line
Be frustrated if you must – the urgency is real. But don’t act surprised. Measured by the EU’s otherwise leisurely legislative pace, simplification has knocked off some cobwebs.
Speed depends on political majorities, and no better example than Omnibus I to see how these have been fraying in the European Parliament. So the key questions on simplifications are: do those majorities hold across other simplification packages? And will they deliver substance or symbolism?
That’s where our attention should be focused.
The comparisons are based on my analysis of EU legislative timelines for the last mandate 2019-2024, which you can find here.
Fabian Bohnenberger 