# Implementation and Simplification Canonical URL: https://digital-acquis.eu/initiative/implementation-and-simplification Entry type: policy initiative Source edition current through: 31 August 2026 (2026-08-31). This is not a page modification date. Status: not recorded. A delivered policy initiative is not necessarily legislation in force. Document type: Communication Release date: 2025-02-11 ## Summary The communication sets out how the Commission intends to make EU rules easier to implement and less burdensome. It combines implementation strategies and stakeholder dialogues with a continuing review of legislation, practical checks with businesses and stronger assessment of regulatory costs. Simplification packages cover areas including sustainability, investment, smaller companies and digital rules. Digital tools and procedures are intended to make compliance easier across borders. Annual reporting would track implementation and burden reduction, while cooperation with Parliament and Council would support clearer assessment of amendments and more effective lawmaking. ## Sources - [Official source]() ## Action items (21; complete published list) ### 1. Action item 200001 Systematic Implementation Strategies: The Commission will prepare a dedicated implementation strategy for each major legislative act, identifying transposition challenges, tracking arrangements, and support measures including for SMEs; directives will be accompanied by explanatory templates and transposition roadmaps for Member States. [from 2025] Provenance: source document doc-021, paragraph 1. Digital dimension: yes. ### 2. Action item 200002 Implementation Dialogues: Each Commissioner will host at least two stakeholder dialogues per year to assess progress and identify areas needing policy attention, with outcomes reported in annual enforcement and implementation progress reports. [from H1 2025] Provenance: source document doc-021, paragraph 2. Digital dimension: yes. ### 3. Action item 200003 Administrative Burden Reduction Targets: The Commission expands its burden reduction targets from reporting costs to all recurring administrative costs, aiming to cut the EUR 150 billion EU-wide baseline by at least 25% for companies and 35% for SMEs by end of mandate. [2025–2029] Provenance: source document doc-021, paragraph 3. Digital dimension: yes. ### 4. Action item 200004 Omnibus Package on Sustainability: Simplifies CSRD, CSDDD, and EU Taxonomy requirements to reduce supply-chain trickle-down effects on SMEs, ease CBAM obligations for smaller importers, and better align sustainability reporting with investor needs. [2025] Provenance: source document doc-021, paragraph 4. Digital dimension: no. ### 5. Action item 200005 Omnibus Package on Investment Simplification: Facilitates deployment of InvestEU and the European Fund for Strategic Investments and streamlines related reporting requirements. [2025] Provenance: source document doc-021, paragraph 5. Digital dimension: yes. ### 6. Action item 200006 Omnibus Package on Small Mid-Caps and Paper Removal: Introduces proportionate requirements for small mid-cap companies and removes paper-format obligations from product legislation. [2025] Provenance: source document doc-021, paragraph 6. Digital dimension: yes. ### 7. Action item 200007 Cybersecurity Act Review and Digital Acquis Fitness Check: Reviews the Cybersecurity Act to enable streamlined multi-purpose reporting and avoid duplication, as part of a broader first-year assessment of whether the digital acquis adequately reflects the needs of SMEs and small mid-caps. [2025] Provenance: source document doc-021, paragraph 7. Digital dimension: yes. ### 8. Action item 200008 European Data Union Strategy: Addresses existing data rules to create a simplified and coherent legal framework enabling businesses and administrations to share data seamlessly and at scale, while maintaining privacy and security standards. [2025] Provenance: source document doc-021, paragraph 8. Digital dimension: yes. ### 9. Action item 200009 CAP Simplification Package: Addresses sources of complexity and excessive administrative burden for farmers and national administrations in managing, monitoring, and reporting under the Common Agricultural Policy, leveraging digitalisation. [2025] Provenance: source document doc-021, paragraph 9. Digital dimension: no. ### 10. Action item 200010 Industrial Decarbonisation Accelerator Act: Extends accelerated permitting procedures to additional sectors in transition, broadening the scope of streamlined authorisation processes beyond the Renewable Energy Directive. [2025] Provenance: source document doc-021, paragraph 10. Digital dimension: yes. ### 11. Action item 200011 REACH Targeted Revision: Simplifies EU chemicals rules to reduce compliance burdens for the chemicals industry without lowering health, safety, or environmental protection standards. [2025] Provenance: source document doc-021, paragraph 11. Digital dimension: no. ### 12. Action item 200012 European Business Wallet: Enables businesses to manage national, cross-border, and EU regulatory requirements, notifications, and compliance processes in one unified, user-friendly digital platform, building on the Digital Wallet. [2025] Provenance: source document doc-021, paragraph 12. Digital dimension: yes. ### 13. Action item 200013 MFF Simplification Proposal: Presents a new long-term EU budget designed to reduce financial landscape fragmentation, ease administrative burdens for beneficiaries and implementing authorities, and improve access to EU funds while retaining financial safeguards. [2025] Provenance: source document doc-021, paragraph 13. Digital dimension: yes. ### 14. Action item 200014 Stress-Testing of EU Acquis: Continuous cross-portfolio review of the entire body of EU legislation for cumulative impacts, inconsistencies, and simplification potential, with each Commissioner responsible for their area and results feeding annually into the Commission Work Programme. [from 2025] Provenance: source document doc-021, paragraph 14. Digital dimension: yes. ### 15. Action item 200015 Reality Checks: Hands-on exchanges with practitioners, particularly SMEs and small mid-caps, to verify the real-world assumptions underpinning EU legislation, identify practical hurdles, and feed findings into stress-testing and future simplification proposals. [from H1 2025] Provenance: source document doc-021, paragraph 15. Digital dimension: yes. ### 16. Action item 200016 Reinforced SME and Competitiveness Checks: Systematic application of reinforced SME and competitiveness impact assessments to all legislation affecting companies, covering cost competitiveness, international position, innovation capacity, and cumulative sectoral effects, with stronger sector focus informed by the Draghi report. [from 2025] Provenance: source document doc-021, paragraph 16. Digital dimension: yes. ### 17. Action item 200017 Impact Assessments for Delegated and Implementing Acts: Delegated and implementing acts involving significant policy choices or impacts not previously assessed will be subject to dedicated impact assessments or cost-savings analyses, with particular attention to SME effects. [from 2025] Provenance: source document doc-021, paragraph 17. Digital dimension: yes. ### 18. Action item 200018 Digital-Ready Policymaking — Embeds digital considerations from the outset of legislative design, including use of regulatory sandboxes, cross-border interoperability for public administrations, expansion of the Single Digital Gateway, and systematic application of 'digital by default' and 'once-only' principles. [from 2025] Provenance: source document doc-021, paragraph 18. Digital dimension: yes. ### 19. Action item 200019 Methodology for Co-Legislator Amendment Assessment: The Commission will propose a simple methodology enabling the European Parliament and Council to estimate the administrative costs of significant amendments without delaying legislative negotiations. [Q2 2025] Provenance: source document doc-021, paragraph 19. Digital dimension: yes. ### 20. Action item 200020 Annual Overview Report on Implementation and Simplification: Annual cross-Commission report presenting progress on burden reduction targets, enforcement actions, and national implementation, with interactive data published on Europa. [from 2025] Provenance: source document doc-021, paragraph 20. Digital dimension: yes. ### 21. Action item 200021 IIA Better Lawmaking Renewal: The Commission will work with the European Parliament and Council to renew the Interinstitutional Agreement on Better Lawmaking, clarifying institutional roles in delivering simpler and more effective rules. [2025] Provenance: source document doc-021, paragraph 21. Digital dimension: yes. ## Referenced entries - [European Data Union Strategy]() — status: delivered. The strategy will establish a simpler, coherent EU framework for secure, large-scale data sharing between businesses and public administrations to power AI. It will align and streamline existing rules and practices, strengthen cross-border interoperability, and embed robust safeguards for confidentiality, integrity, security and IP. Concretely, it will: promote common technical and semantic standards (e.g. schemas, metadata, APIs); enable trusted data intermediaries and data-pooling mechanisms; expand access via privacy-preserving methods (e.g. anonymisation, synthetic data, secure processing); and clarify fair, transparent licensing for B2B and public-private data use. Closely linked to AI Factories, new Data Labs will federate sectoral datasets and connect to Common European Data Spaces to unlock high-quality training data at scale. Source document doc-021, action item 200008: > European Data Union Strategy: Addresses existing data rules to create a simplified and coherent legal framework enabling businesses and administrations to share data seamlessly and at scale, while maintaining privacy and security standards. [2025] - [European Business Wallet]() — status: in progress. It will provide a legally recognised digital identity for economic operators, enabling companies to share verified data and credentials across borders and receive notifications in a secure channel. Built on BRIS and the European Unique Identifier, and aligned with the EU Digital Identity Wallet rollout and the Once-Only Technical System, it replaces document-heavy compliance with interoperable, data-based exchanges. The Wallet is a cornerstone of the Single Market simplification agenda and the EU Startup & Scaleup Strategy, lowering costs for SMEs, easing licensing and reporting, and making cross-border operations seamless, turning digital-by-default rules into practice across the EU business lifecycle. Source document doc-021, action item 200012: > European Business Wallet: Enables businesses to manage national, cross-border, and EU regulatory requirements, notifications, and compliance processes in one unified, user-friendly digital platform, building on the Digital Wallet. [2025] - [Annual Enforcement and Implementation Progress Reports]() — status: ongoing. Annual Enforcement and Implementation Progress Reports provide the Council and European Parliament with updates on simplification, implementation and enforcement within each Commissioner's area of responsibility. The 2025 Annual Progress Reports cover 1st January to 31 July 2025. They address simplification and stress testing, implementation support, enforcement, progress made and concrete next steps across the Commission's portfolios. Source document doc-021, action item 200002: > Implementation Dialogues: Each Commissioner will host at least two stakeholder dialogues per year to assess progress and identify areas needing policy attention, with outcomes reported in annual enforcement and implementation progress reports. [from H1 2025] - [Reality Checks]() — status: ongoing. Reality Checks are hands-on diagnostics that bring Commission services to practitioners to test whether EU rules work in real life. Through targeted technical exchanges, teams identify hurdles in authorisations, permitting, control and compliance, capture good practices, and map where national transposition or “gold-plating” adds cost or fragmentation. Findings verify the assumptions behind legislation, quantify burdens and expected savings, and assess if planned simplifications are realistic. Results feed directly into evaluations and fitness checks, the gradual stress-test of the acquis, and the design of future simplification packages, ensuring evidence-based fixes and quicker, cheaper compliance without lowering standards. Source document doc-021, action item 200015: > Reality Checks: Hands-on exchanges with practitioners, particularly SMEs and small mid-caps, to verify the real-world assumptions underpinning EU legislation, identify practical hurdles, and feed findings into stress-testing and future simplification proposals. [from H1 2025] - [Reinforced SME and Competitiveness Checks]() — status: forthcoming. Will be mandatory for proposals with business impacts, combining a reinforced SME test with a sector-focused competitiveness lens. The check assesses four dimensions (i.e. cost/price effects, international competitiveness, innovation capacity, and specific SME impacts) and examines cumulative burdens across value chains. Findings will shape mitigation (e.g. lighter regimes, phased timing, digital-by-default delivery) and be transparently presented in impact assessments, with stronger analysis of indirect effects on SMEs. Fitness checks will also report on efficiency for SMEs. Results feed progress reports and a stress-test of the acquis, ensuring no new Single Market barriers and aligning rules with Europe’s overall growth agenda. Source document doc-021, action item 200016: > Reinforced SME and Competitiveness Checks: Systematic application of reinforced SME and competitiveness impact assessments to all legislation affecting companies, covering cost competitiveness, international position, innovation capacity, and cumulative sectoral effects, with stronger sector focus informed by the Draghi report. [from 2025] ## Associated policy priorities - [AI & Data Capabilities and Deployment]() - [Competitiveness, Innovation & Strategic Investment]() - [Single Market Deepening & Harmonisation]() - [Implementation, Simplification & Better Regulation]() --- [Reading guide and interpretation notes]() · [Methodology]()