Good morning, everyone.
Welcome to this College readout.
Yesterday, the College adopted the Commission Work Programme for 2025 titled ‘Moving Forward Together: A bolder, simpler, faster Union.
We also adopted the Communication on implementation and simplification and a roadmap to the next Multiannual Financial Framework.
Those first two points will be the focus of todays press conference which myself and, hopefully, Commissioner Šefčovič will go into shortly.
In the meantime, please note that you will find details and links to the documents adopted yesterday on all three of the aforementioned items in the press material that was published on the Press Corner this morning.
Now let me draw your attention to the nomination made by the College.
We decided to appoint Pierre Bascou as the Deputy Director-General at the Directorate for Agriculture and Rural Development, in charge of markets and international relations. The date of effect of this decision will be determined at a later stage.
You will find more details of this appointment in todays Daily News, which will be online shortly.
With that said, let me move to the main topic of todays press conference.
As a starting point, I would like to emphasise that the EU can no longer afford to continue with business as usual.
This sentiment was made clear in last years Draghi report and is enshrined in the political guidelines of the new Commission mandate.
The freedoms and quality of life that we enjoy cannot be taken for granted in a currently changing, complex world.
Securing our prosperity and preserving our values depends more than ever on our ability to adapt, innovate, and compete.
This is why we must take decisive action to unleash people, business and authorities to realise Europes full potential.
Simplification is at the centre of our plan to achieve a more competitive Europe.
The EU is now emerging from a period of very intense regulatory activity.
It showed our determination to address the sweeping changes brought about by technological transformation and climate change.
However, the accumulation of rules over time, their increased complexity and implementation challenges are limiting our economic potential and our prosperity.
Our engagement with stakeholders confirms this view.
Regulation is seen by more than 60% of EU companies as an obstacle to investment, with 55% of small and medium-sized enterprises flagging regulatory obstacles and administrative burdens as their greatest challenge.
In short, European businesses should spend much less time and resources complying with red tape, so that they can instead focus on what really matters: developing innovative ideas, putting them into motion in Europe and creating high-quality jobs.
Our commitment to securing the green and digital transitions has not wavered.
However, we need to be mindful of how we get there.
Simplification is not about deregulation.
Rather, we seek to ensure that we reach our objectives with rules and regulations that are viable, effective and consistent.
Empowering our people and businesses in a more competitive Europe will help create a thriving economic base that can help, not hinder, the achievement of our green, digital and social objectives.
Today, we launch a new drive to speed up, simplify and improve EU policies and laws, make rules clearer and easier to understand and faster to implement.
This Communication sets out new tools to deliver on this ambitious agenda.
Let me to highlight just a few.
Firstly, we will give much more prominence to implementation at all stages of the policy cycle.
This includes working with Member States and stakeholders very early on, to identify constraints, even before making legislative proposals.
Second, Commissioners will carry out implementation dialogues with stakeholders, at least twice a year, and services will liaise with practitioners through reality checks.
These tools will help to identify what works and what does not, foster good practices and prepare new simplification measures.
Third, each Commission service will be responsible for setting out a multi-year plan to stress test existing rules. Stress-testing will be a continuous process. To kick-start it, the Work Programme we are presenting today includes a first list of evaluations of individual laws and core policy areas for which we will do fitness checks.
All of this will require dialogue with stakeholders and prioritisation.
Fourth, we are setting ambitious targets, unveiled already in the Competitiveness Compass: reducing administrative burdens by at least 25% for all companies and 35% for SMEs.
Fifth, we will report regularly on progress towards those targets and about the results achieved on the ground, in annual implementation and enforcement reports.
Last but not least, we will apply stronger checks to avoid that new legislative proposals hurt our competitiveness or SMEs, and we will scrutinise delegated and implementing acts to avoid creating more costs.
Taken together, these new rules should change the way in which the European Commission works.
They signal a change in corporate and regulatory culture, focused on making sure that EU rules are as simple and cost-effective as possible, and that they deliver on the ground.
We will not be creating more processes and layers in order to deliver simpler rules. Instead, we will reprioritise our resources and refocus our efforts to deliver on these goals.
Now is when the hard work really begins.
We will present the first in a series of simplification proposals in the coming weeks.
The Omnibus packages outlined in the 2025 Commission Work Programme will be our first deliverables of this mandate.
But, they are only a start.
This effort will continue over the course of the whole mandate.
I look forward to working with the co-legislators so that they treat our simplification proposals with priority.
We need the European Parliament and the Council, as well as Member States and regional and local authorities to play ball.
There is much at stake.
Without simpler and more cost-effective rules, Europe will keep on losing economic weight.
We must be clear: simplification and enhancing Europes competitiveness are not ends in themselves.
What we are doing is setting the right conditions to have more innovation, more business, higher growth and better jobs in Europe.
Those are important, not only to maintain our wellbeing and social model, but also our ability to succeed in the green and digital transitions.
I acknowledge that our agenda is ambitious, but I am confident that, together, we will rise to the occasion and deliver.
Thank you.