Linz: Fifteen member states want the European Union to declare an implementation and consolidation year, and they put the idea to ministers at the General Affairs Council on 22 September 2026. Austria leads the group, which also includes Czechia, Denmark, Germany, Estonia, Greece, Italy, Latvia, Lithuania, Hungary, Poland, Portugal, Slovenia, Slovakia and Finland, as EU Reporter detailed on 2 October.
The non-paper behind the implementation and consolidation year asks the Commission to pause new rule-making long enough to make existing laws work. It calls for a systematic review of EU legislation to find outdated, redundant or needlessly complex provisions, and it wants fewer duplicate reporting duties for companies. Austria argues that firms spend too much time on paperwork and too little on investment, and the other fourteen signatories share that diagnosis.
The capitals also want a cumulative assessment of regulatory burdens before the Commission tables fresh proposals. Under their plan, every new act would face a test, carried out before ministers vote, against its effect on competitiveness, investment and innovation. Supporters say an implementation and consolidation year would give businesses time to absorb the rules already adopted.
The Commission does not start from zero. It has set targets to cut administrative burdens by at least 25% for businesses and 35% for small and medium-sized enterprises by the end of its mandate, which it estimates could save 37.5 billion euros a year. In April 2026 it also promised a regulatory deep cleaning across goods, services, taxation, health, agriculture, energy and environment legislation, and it publishes its work on the European Commission website.
That record explains why the implementation and consolidation year divides opinion. Backers argue that simplification packages still add new obligations while old ones remain in force. Sceptics fear that a formal freeze would delay files on defence, energy and digital policy that the Commission and Parliament consider urgent. They also note that the Commission already runs simplification omnibus packages, so a separate pause could duplicate work that is under way and slow reforms that businesses actually asked for.
Giuseppe Tanga, director of the Hermes European Study Centre, argued that simplification and enforcement must advance together. In his words, Europe cannot enforce its way out of a competitiveness problem. His point cuts both ways, because a consolidation period would also ask national administrations to apply rules they have transposed late or not at all.
The next step belongs to the Commission and to the Council presidency. Ministers can fold the idea into the 2027 work programme, or the Commission can answer with its own list of rules to repeal. Either way, the implementation and consolidation year has moved from a think-tank slogan to a position backed by fifteen governments, and leaders will likely face it when they discuss competitiveness this autumn.
