EurActive: Better regulation package “potentially a breakthrough”
EPP Group welcomes more rigorous impact assessments for new laws and emphasises role of Member states in avoiding red tape
The EU Commission’s Better Regulation Package is “potentially a breakthrough”, says Markus Pieper MEP, Chairman of the EPP Group’s SME Circle. The EPP Group welcomes the proposal for more rigorous impact assessments for new laws and emphasises the role of Member States in avoiding red tape. “It is absolutely right to strengthen independent bodies that asses new legislative proposals,” Pieper said.
“Also the review of the undemocratic informal trilogues is good and will increase the credibility and transparency of European law making,” the EPP Group MEP stresses.
Pieper welcomes the reminder from Commission Vice-President Frans Timmermans to Parliament and the Member States of their responsibility to avoid red tape. “Unfortunately Member States do not fully use all instruments to monitor the subsidiarity principle. Member States’ criticism of too-intrusive EU laws is credible only when they make use of their right to file subsidiarity complaints,” Pieper explains.
The new ‘Scrutiny Board’ can make an impact only if it is 100% independent and has the power to stop bad legislative proposals
Markus Pieper MEP
The new ‘Scrutiny Board’ proposed by Timmermans is for Pieper “only a good starting point, which must be improved”.
“The idea is good. But it can make an impact only if the board is 100% independent, like similar institutions in Germany and the UK, and has the power to stop bad legislative proposals,” Pieper stresses.
To set up an ‘independent Impact Assessment Board’ for new and old EU laws is officially part of the political goals of the EPP Group in the European Parliament. This kind of institution exists at the constitutional level in countries such as Sweden, the Czech Republic, the Netherlands, the United Kingdom and Germany.