This is a satirical piece
In an unprecedented act of institutional self-restraint, the European Commission has decided to suspend all new legislative and regulatory initiatives for one full year.
No new directives. No new regulations. No delegated acts, strategies, roadmaps, frameworks, action plans or “initiatives.”
The reason? Brussels has reportedly concluded that before producing another mountain of rules, it might be useful to understand the mountain already sitting on Europe’s desk.
- The big announcement: the European Commission declares a 12-month legislative freeze. No new directives, regulations, delegated acts, strategies, roadmaps, frameworks, action plans or “initiatives.”
- Reason for the freeze: Brussels has finally concluded that before regulating anything else, it should first understand everything it already regulated.
- The introspection year: thousands of Commission officials are reassigned from writing new rules to reading old ones and asking: “Did anyone outside this building actually understand this?”
- The “bullshit audit”: every existing policy must pass three tests: Does it solve a real problem? Can a normal person understand it? Does complying with it require hiring a consultant?
- Special attention to SMEs: officials are required to spend a week running a small European business and personally complete all the forms, registrations, reporting obligations and compliance questionnaires they helped create.
- New internal principle: for every new acronym invented, two old acronyms must be abolished.
- Consultancy detox: no new 300-page studies explaining why another 300-page strategy is necessary.
- Impact assessment reform: instead of asking whether legislation is “ambitious,” officials must calculate how many hours an accountant, shopkeeper, farmer or small manufacturer will lose complying with it.
- End-of-year result: the Commission returns after twelve months either with a much simpler rulebook—or with the terrifying discovery that Europe functioned perfectly well during the year when Brussels stopped producing new rules.
For European businesses, the freeze may prove to be the most radical simplification measure Brussels has ever introduced: doing absolutely nothing.
The only remaining question is whether, after twelve months of introspection, the Commission will conclude that Europe needs fewer rules—or create a new regulation governing how future regulations should be reduced.