Simplification: Commission is halfway through its work – red tape costs cut by 18 billion out of 37.5 billion target

Brussels – Industrial simplification and competitiveness: the European Commission is halfway through its work. Measures have been adopted that meet 50 per cent of the targets set by the von der Leyen team, which is now racing against the clock to complete its mission. This is evident from the figures provided by the Commissioner for the Economy, Valdis Dombrovskis, in his reply to a parliamentary question on the subject: “The Commission has put a target to lower the administrative burden by at least 25 per cent for all
businesses and by at least 35 per cent for SMEs (small and medium-sized enterprises),” he points out. Translated into absolute terms, “this target requires cutting recurring administrative
costs by 37.5 billion euros over the Commission’s mandate,” i.e., by June 2029. 

Faced with this milestone, the EU is currently only halfway there, as Dombrovskis stressed: “The 12 Omnibus and other simplification proposals put forward by the Commission by mid-2026 will translate into more
than 18 billion euros of annual administrative cost savings for companies of all sizes.” Looking at the figures, just over 18 billion euros out of a total of 37.5 billion means half the path has been completed, and half remains. 

As part of this process of regulatory simplification and the reduction of bureaucratic costs, “SMEs would benefit from significant savings,”  Dombrovskis assures. One example of this is the digital omnibus, which, as the Commissioner for the Economy explains, amounts to “860 million euros of administrative burden reduction.” Furthermore, the proposal for a targeted revision of EU rules on medical devices and in vitro diagnostic devices will result in cost reductions of “1.5 billion euros” for small and medium-sized enterprises.

The Commission launched the simplification process in 2025 and implemented it through the legislative initiatives known as “Omnibus packages”. The European Commission launched the process on 26 February 2025 with the first two packages on sustainability and investment, followed by the Omnibus packages on Agriculture (20 May), the internal market and SMEs (21 May), defence (17 June), chemicals and cosmetics (8 July), the digital sector (19 November), the environment (10 December), the automotive sector (16 December) and food safety (16 December). In addition to these ten Omnibus packages, there were those from 2026: taxation (24 June) and energy products (24 June).