Back in July 2015, we acknowledged the priorities established by the Luxembourg presidency, topped by ambitious cross-sectoral dossier of Better Regulation and the Interinstitutional Agreement negociations. We investigated these issues through the lens of their “A Union for the Citizens” pledge. With four months left, this promise to EU citizens still has much to deliver if it is to meet expectations. This paper is a mid-term look at the advances made with these dossiers

Cioriciu, Anca

Willermain, Fabian

Archive of European Integration

  
 
EGMONT Royal Institute for International Relations 
No. 2 
June 2011 
No. 39 
October 2015 
The Better Regulation Package : 
Creating better regulations, but for what kind of EU 
politics ? 
 
Fabian Willermain and Anca Cioriciu 
 
 
Introduction  
It is hard to overlook the fact that amid the 
many EU-wide crises that accumulated over the 
summer, the pace of discussions over the Better 
Regulation Package may have slowed. 
Nevertheless, the framework for the 
Functioning of the EU is still in need of 
refurbishment. Citizens feel estranged and 
perceive the EU as a slow and opaque generator 
of laws. This political culture needs to change. 
Efforts to bring the EU to citizens should 
become the prevailing practice for the EU and 
its institutions, and, needless to say, national 
lawmakers. The strongest message is sent via 
transparency, integrity and reinforcement of 
accountability mechanisms as they allow citizens 
to ‘look in the kitchen of EU law-making” as 
Frans Timmermans puts it. However, the 
kitchen still seems to have certain cupboards 
and storage rooms whose doors have been left 
merely ajar. This means that practices covering 
transparency issues remain elusive and 
inadequate for citizens and for the EU’s 
aspirations to legitimacy.  
The better regulation agenda is composed of a 
set of tools which aim to improve the EU 
decision making process. Its main purpose is to 
ensure that EU legislation better serves citizens 
and businesses. It promises that the EU 
legislative process would be more transparent, 
open to stakeholder input and easier to follow. 
In order to achieve this aim, the Commission 
introduced a new agreement between the EU 
institutions, designed to make cooperation 
between them smoother and clearer. 
The Interinstitutional Agreement 
First of all, one of the main objectives of the 
Luxembourg presidency is to finalise the 
Back in July 2015, we acknowledged the 
priorities established by the 
Luxembourg presidency, topped by 
ambitious cross-sectoral dossier of 
Better Regulation and the 
Interinstitutional Agreement 
negociations. We investigated these 
issues through the lens of their “A 
Union for the Citizens” pledge. 
With four months left, this promise to 
EU citizens still has much to deliver if it 
is to meet expectations. This paper is a 
mid-term look at the advances made 
with these dossiers. 
  
 
EGMONT Royal Institute for International Relations 
 
2 
 
negotiations on the update of the 
Interinstitutional Agreement on Better 
Regulation, on the basis of the proposal 
submitted by the European Commission. The 
aim is to enable better interinstitutional 
cooperation, which should ensure the quality of 
legislation that takes the interests and needs of 
citizens into account.  
Normally, an interinstitutional agreement pays 
significant attention to the first chapter,  
'programming' and ‘planning’. It envisages the 
work organisation of the three main EU 
institutions and in particular tries to coordinate 
their political programme. 
Whereas the Commission pictured the 
Interinstitutional Agreement as the canvas for 
the Working Programme Agreement and as a 
dossier in its own right, a reality check shows 
that it is actually only part of the Better 
Regulation Agenda. Moreover, in his statement 
in the European Parliament plenary session 
ahead of the vote on the college, President 
Juncker mentioned the Interinstitutional 
Agreement only once and then in relation to the 
mandatory transparency register. This was a 
surprising shift that means that the 
Interinstitutional Agreement is no longer the 
number one priority but instead a simple tool of 
the Better Regulation Package. Moreover, we 
see no sign of transparency register diligence on 
the horizon. One of the reasons for the better 
regulation frenzy could be the negotiation with 
the United Kingdom, as this narrative gets a 
good response  in London. 
Nevertheless, it seems that the negotiations are 
much more complicated than official statements 
reveal. On the one hand, the timing might be 
somehow optimistic given that the political and 
institutional contexts have substantially changed 
since 2003 when the first agreement on better 
law-making was signed. Reinforced political 
actors and different institutional forces will seek 
to assert their hard-fought competences. On the 
other hand, for the first time the Council is party 
to this agreement, and its addition to the process 
entails many more dealings. It is clear that this 
agreement should not be a way for the Council 
to padlock the Commission’s right of initiative. 
While it is obvious that such an agreement could 
help the EU decision-making process, under no 
circumstances  should it block the political 
debate.  
If some could appreciate the Interinstitutional 
agreement as a purely technical dossier, it is in 
the absolute opposite. Indeed, a new 
Interinstitutional agreement is one of the most 
important negotiations as it defines how the 
three main institutions will work together. The 
fact that institutional aspects fall under the remit 
of the First Vice-President Frans Timmermans 
is a clear signal from the new Commission of its 
high interest in this area. 
Stakeholder consultations 
The Better Regulation Proposal covers the four 
stages of the legislative cycle, from drafting to 
adoption, implementation and ex-post 
evaluation. The package introduces the 
possibility of holding consultations throughout 
the full cycle (including after the Commission 
has submitted its proposals to the legislators) 
and more interestingly on the secondary 
legislation. At first it might seem that this 
presents more opportunities for stakeholders to 
promote their interests.  
However, one cannot ignore the fact that the 
time efficiency and therefore the ‘betterness’ of 
legislation would be improved. One very 
political aspect that also cannot be ignored is 
that once the executive have submitted a 
proposal to both legislators,  comes political 
negotiations, and therefore excessive expertise 
and consultations might interfere with the 
political mission of the legislators. Instead, the 
Commission could streamline the participatory 
character of their public consultations with 
  
 
EGMONT Royal Institute for International Relations 
 
3 
 
stakeholders and interested authorities and 
facilitate even more dialogues in early 
preparation phases. In this sense, the open web 
portal where legislative initiatives could be 
tracked is one very welcome component of the 
reform. It is a crucial tool for the transparency 
crusade and was supposed to be in full swing a 
long time ago. Once in place, it should be 
updated in real time. 
The modifications targeting the delegated and 
implementation acts need close monitoring. It is 
neither certain whether the expert groups would 
easily take on board proposals from the 
consulted parties nor that the revised common 
understanding of the delegated acts would 
appease the European Parliament. Evidently, we 
will not witness a simulacrum of openness and 
proficiency. What the Commission sadly left out 
was the establishment of the transparent register 
for the delegated acts referred to by 
Timmermans in his confirmation hearing before 
the European Parliament. 
Transparency and legitimacy concerns also take 
form in the case of the new Regulatory Scrutiny 
Board proposed to oversee the impact 
assessment process. Half of the board will be 
recruited from outside the Commission. This 
aspect needs special attention so that interests 
and non-alignment to Commission staff 
regulation cannot downplay the credibility of 
this newly created body. It is important to keep 
an eye on their ability and willingness to resist 
daunting lobby pressures, because the question 
of the independence of the external members of 
this new Board is extremely vague (see Article 4 
of the decision which implemented the Board, 
which stipulates that ' the members of the Board 
and the supporting staff shall act independently 
and shall not seek or take instructions. They 
shall disclose any potential conflict of interest 
with respect to a particular report to the Chair, 
or, in the case of the Chair, to the President'). 
Indeed, we could ask why the EU executive, 
whose main purpose is to defend the general 
interest, has integrated three external members 
into this board. On 7 July, the College of 
Commissioners approved the hiring process and 
the Commission has begun to look for 
candidates among existing staff and externally. 
The transparency promise 
The Commission lent its ear to the voices of 
civil society when they  urged  transparency and 
warned about the EU losing legitimacy and 
credibility in the eyes of its citizens. However, 
the transparency lane opened by the new 
Commission still misses some markers. 
Therefore, we hope for a fast-paced 
transparency spillover into the areas where 
transparency is currently the exception and not 
the norm. When dealing with access to 
documents, the EU should have a more 
automatic and swift system of response that 
becomes the norm. Sporadic litigations should 
not define EU transparency. Also, the question 
of introducing a ‘legislative footprint’ requires 
the willingness and involvement of all EU 
decision-making institutions. The citizens should 
be able to clearly grasp the legislative flow and 
be familiar with the contributors who make 
decisions that affect their lives. The same goes 
for the Transparency Register, because it's the 
responsibility of the EU leadership to prioritise 
making it mandatory and implement it in all EU 
institutions. This goes hand in hand with the 
register of delegated acts that should become 
reality. 
What’s more, the European Parliament Bureau 
should engage in developing a new and binding 
code of conduct that should include clear 
sanctioning mechanisms for misconduct. While 
the Better Regulation Proposal commits to more 
transparency and consultation, the Commission 
actually needs to clarify and to uplift the 
concretisation of the European Citizens’ 
Initiative's modus operandi. Otherwise, it will 
merely represent filler pages in the treaty. 
  
 
EGMONT Royal Institute for International Relations 
 
4 
 
Timmermans also promised greater transparency 
on trilateral negotiations. The astuteness test 
that Timmermans has to pass when it comes to 
trilogues marks the fine line between 
transparency and efficiency. A true transparency 
leverage, which could render the EU more 
legitimate, lies within these trilogue negotiations. 
Citizens need to be aware of the positions of 
their political representatives. 
However, it seems that the usual transparency 
watchdogs are not alone in this race, as the 
constant vigilance of the European Ombudsman 
is transformed into the long-awaited 
transparency expectations. On 28 May, her 
office launched an official investigation into the 
notoriously arcane trilogues, expecting rapid 
results.  Admittedly, we should not underplay 
the level of transparency that the EU institutions 
already offer compared to other organisations 
and national entities. It is in fact one of the most 
transparent structures in the world. 
Impact assessments and the subsidiarity 
principle 
The subsidiarity principle dominates EU law-
making. EU legislation could be deemed 
unnecessary at the most local level, or on the 
contrary, could be essential to reach proposed 
objectives. This gives the subsidiarity principle a 
dual nature, forcing  us to highlight the 
importance of caution in the EU legislation 
simplification process. The Better Regulation 
scanner should not undermine the Internal 
Market nor its four freedoms, while the impact 
assessments and the subsidiarity principle tests 
should always bear in mind the cost of non-
Europe as a consequence of non-existent EU 
legislative initiatives. Finally, one should 
remember that in the end, the EU level could 
indeed be the better level at which to act. 
The proliferation of impact assessments cannot 
be overlooked in the Interinstitutional 
Agreement proposal. It indicates that impact 
assessments could be required in the case of 
‘substantial amendments’ tabled by the 
European Parliament or by the Council. The 
concept of ‘substantial’ deserves a clear 
definition by the Commission in order to avoid 
discussions, interpretations and its 
misapplication in practice. Together with the 
eight-week consultations with the stakeholders 
after the Commission adopted its proposal, it is 
likely that these additional impact assessments 
would burden the political process of law-
making and eventually slow it down. Normally 
designed as tools of support for the legislative 
process, they should not overload or even 
substitute for the political character of the EU 
legislative mechanism. Moreover, impact 
assessments could be stripped of their necessity. 
The use of impact assessments by the Council 
could be used by some Member States as a tool 
for blocking or 'indefinitely' postponing a 
proposal. 
Gauging the conveyer of EU legislative acts 
We could say that some of the concerns 
expressed by some Eurosceptic parties have 
been addressed through the Better Regulation 
Package. However, this push for better 
regulation also involves the review of all existing 
and pending legislation. Admittedly, in 
December 2014, the Commission mentioned 
that 80 pending bills would be dropped. This is 
rather worrying for the EU’s legitimacy as well 
as for the Commission’s authority and 
competence.  
On April 14, although the European Court of 
Justice confirmed the inseparability of the 
Commission’s rights of initiative and of 
withdrawal, it also outlined concrete conditions 
for the Commission to jettison pending bills 
from the legislative table. Better Regulation does 
not necessarily mean less regulation, but rather 
more efficient regulation. The Interinstitutional 
Agreement that we will further address also 
includes a legislation withdrawal provision. It 
  
 
EGMONT Royal Institute for International Relations 
 
5 
 
commits the three institutions to agree every 
year on the working programme, which should 
also include the legislative proposals that the 
Commission would withdraw. We can then 
safely assert that the spirit of conciliation is 
paramount to the EU functioning, and prevails 
over any form of unilateral institutional 
ambitions. 
The push to cut red tape is not entirely 
dependent on the withdrawal of proposals. 
Indeed, it could be dangerous to press the delete 
key for many legislative proposals submitted by 
the former Commission solely to please certain 
leaders. The fact that the Commission treats the 
UK referendum with importance and has 
created a special task force is already a good 
step. However, fear of the Brexit cannot limit 
the EU executive's right of initiative. One 
should remember that President Juncker 
explained that 'his' Commission will not be 
political, but ‘very political’. In the same vein, he 
wanted the Commission to harness its initiative 
correctly and not behave as a General Secretariat 
of the European Council. Under these 
circumstances, the best way to concretise these 
words is to put legislative proposals on the table, 
and not to act at the behest of any Member 
State or electoral momentum. 
Conclusion: Better Regulation must go hand 
in hand with more Politics 
Once governments and EU institutions realise 
that openness, inclusion and participatory 
democracy creates the best outcome in a 
political process, the populist fandoms will run 
short of arguments and stories to stir up 
disillusionment and increase euroscepticism. 
Perceptions of a streamlined EU would water 
down eurosceptic rebukes and bring solutions 
for better EU governance.  
It is natural to have continual improvements to 
the transparency, accountability and efficiency 
mechanisms. Nevertheless, the future of Europe 
has always been a political project and, like all 
political projects, it should be supported by 
public opinion. Consequently, it is imperative 
for the EU to become a proper political arena 
with strong political actors in order to have a 
genuine democratic process at the EU level. In 
this sense, we can only be sceptical vis-à-vis the 
aim of the Better Regulation Agenda. It appears 
to be a tool to rebuild trust in the eyes of EU 
citizens, but in many aspects it seems to limit the 
inherently political dimension of the EU 
decision-making process. 
Yet, the Luxembourg commitment to frame its 
priorities around the interests of the citizen 
should be a recurrent responsibility for the 
future rotating presidencies. The EU needs its 
citizens’ support and trust – above all in time of 
crises that create divisions and scepticism. 
Fabian Willermain is Research Fellow at 
Egmont – Royal Institute for International 
Relations. 
Anca Cioriciu is Project Assistant - Soros 
Foundation Moldova, part of Open Society 
Foundations.
 


The Better Regulation Package: Creating better regulations, but for what kind of EU politics?. European Policy Brief No. 39, October 2015

   EGMONT Royal Institute for International Relations No. 2 June 2011 No. 39 October 2015 The Better Regulation Package : Creating better regulations, but for what kind of EU politics ?  Fabian Willermain and Anca Cioriciu   Introduction  It is hard to overlook the fact that amid the many EU-wide crises that accumulated over the summer, the pace of discussions over the Better Regulation Package may have slowed. Nevertheless, the framework for the Functioning of the EU is still in need of refurbishment. Citizens feel estranged and perceive the EU as a slow and opaque generator of laws. This political culture needs to change. Efforts to bring the EU to citizens should become the prevailing practice for the EU and its institutions, and, needless to say, national lawmakers. The strongest message is sent via transparency, integrity and reinforcement of accountability mechanisms as they allow citizens to ‘look in the kitchen of EU law-making” as Frans Timmermans puts it. However, the kitchen still seems to have certain cupboards and storage rooms whose doors have been left merely ajar. This means that practices covering transparency issues remain elusive and inadequate for citizens and for the EU’s aspirations to legitimacy.  The better regulation agenda is composed of a set of tools which aim to improve the EU decision making process. Its main purpose is to ensure that EU legislation better serves citizens and businesses. It promises that the EU legislative process would be more transparent, open to stakeholder input and easier to follow. In order to achieve this aim, the Commission introduced a new agreement between the EU institutions, designed to make cooperation between them smoother and clearer. The Interinstitutional Agreement First of all, one of the main objectives of the Luxembourg presidency is to finalise the Back in July 2015, we acknowledged the priorities established by the Luxembourg presidency, topped by ambitious cross-sectoral dossier of Better Regulation and the Interinstitutional Agreement negociations. We investigated these issues through the lens of their “A Union for the Citizens” pledge. With four months left, this promise to EU citizens still has much to deliver if it is to meet expectations. This paper is a mid-term look at the advances made with these dossiers.    EGMONT Royal Institute for International Relations  2  negotiations on the update of the Interinstitutional Agreement on Better Regulation, on the basis of the proposal submitted by the European Commission. The aim is to enable better interinstitutional cooperation, which should ensure the quality of legislation that takes the interests and needs of citizens into account.  Normally, an interinstitutional agreement pays significant attention to the first chapter,  'programming' and ‘planning’. It envisages the work organisation of the three main EU institutions and in particular tries to coordinate their political programme. Whereas the Commission pictured the Interinstitutional Agreement as the canvas for the Working Programme Agreement and as a dossier in its own right, a reality check shows that it is actually only part of the Better Regulation Agenda. Moreover, in his statement in the European Parliament plenary session ahead of the vote on the college, President Juncker mentioned the Interinstitutional Agreement only once and then in relation to the mandatory transparency register. This was a surprising shift that means that the Interinstitutional Agreement is no longer the number one priority but instead a simple tool of the Better Regulation Package. Moreover, we see no sign of transparency register diligence on the horizon. One of the reasons for the better regulation frenzy could be the negotiation with the United Kingdom, as this narrative gets a good response  in London. Nevertheless, it seems that the negotiations are much more complicated than official statements reveal. On the one hand, the timing might be somehow optimistic given that the political and institutional contexts have substantially changed since 2003 when the first agreement on better law-making was signed. Reinforced political actors and different institutional forces will seek to assert their hard-fought competences. On the other hand, for the first time the Council is party to this agreement, and its addition to the process entails many more dealings. It is clear that this agreement should not be a way for the Council to padlock the Commission’s right of initiative. While it is obvious that such an agreement could help the EU decision-making process, under no circumstances  should it block the political debate.  If some could appreciate the Interinstitutional agreement as a purely technical dossier, it is in the absolute opposite. Indeed, a new Interinstitutional agreement is one of the most important negotiations as it defines how the three main institutions will work together. The fact that institutional aspects fall under the remit of the First Vice-President Frans Timmermans is a clear signal from the new Commission of its high interest in this area. Stakeholder consultations The Better Regulation Proposal covers the four stages of the legislative cycle, from drafting to adoption, implementation and ex-post evaluation. The package introduces the possibility of holding consultations throughout the full cycle (including after the Commission has submitted its proposals to the legislators) and more interestingly on the secondary legislation. At first it might seem that this presents more opportunities for stakeholders to promote their interests.  However, one cannot ignore the fact that the time efficiency and therefore the ‘betterness’ of legislation would be improved. One very political aspect that also cannot be ignored is that once the executive have submitted a proposal to both legislators,  comes political negotiations, and therefore excessive expertise and consultations might interfere with the political mission of the legislators. Instead, the Commission could streamline the participatory character of their public consultations with    EGMONT Royal Institute for International Relations  3  stakeholders and interested authorities and facilitate even more dialogues in early preparation phases. In this sense, the open web portal where legislative initiatives could be tracked is one very welcome component of the reform. It is a crucial tool for the transparency crusade and was supposed to be in full swing a long time ago. Once in place, it should be updated in real time. The modifications targeting the delegated and implementation acts need close monitoring. It is neither certain whether the expert groups would easily take on board proposals from the consulted parties nor that the revised common understanding of the delegated acts would appease the European Parliament. Evidently, we will not witness a simulacrum of openness and proficiency. What the Commission sadly left out was the establishment of the transparent register for the delegated acts referred to by Timmermans in his confirmation hearing before the European Parliament. Transparency and legitimacy concerns also take form in the case of the new Regulatory Scrutiny Board proposed to oversee the impact assessment process. Half of the board will be recruited from outside the Commission. This aspect needs special attention so that interests and non-alignment to Commission staff regulation cannot downplay the credibility of this newly created body. It is important to keep an eye on their ability and willingness to resist daunting lobby pressures, because the question of the independence of the external members of this new Board is extremely vague (see Article 4 of the decision which implemented the Board, which stipulates that ' the members of the Board and the supporting staff shall act independently and shall not seek or take instructions. They shall disclose any potential conflict of interest with respect to a particular report to the Chair, or, in the case of the Chair, to the President'). Indeed, we could ask why the EU executive, whose main purpose is to defend the general interest, has integrated three external members into this board. On 7 July, the College of Commissioners approved the hiring process and the Commission has begun to look for candidates among existing staff and externally. The transparency promise The Commission lent its ear to the voices of civil society when they  urged  transparency and warned about the EU losing legitimacy and credibility in the eyes of its citizens. However, the transparency lane opened by the new Commission still misses some markers. Therefore, we hope for a fast-paced transparency spillover into the areas where transparency is currently the exception and not the norm. When dealing with access to documents, the EU should have a more automatic and swift system of response that becomes the norm. Sporadic litigations should not define EU transparency. Also, the question of introducing a ‘legislative footprint’ requires the willingness and involvement of all EU decision-making institutions. The citizens should be able to clearly grasp the legislative flow and be familiar with the contributors who make decisions that affect their lives. The same goes for the Transparency Register, because it's the responsibility of the EU leadership to prioritise making it mandatory and implement it in all EU institutions. This goes hand in hand with the register of delegated acts that should become reality. What’s more, the European Parliament Bureau should engage in developing a new and binding code of conduct that should include clear sanctioning mechanisms for misconduct. While the Better Regulation Proposal commits to more transparency and consultation, the Commission actually needs to clarify and to uplift the concretisation of the European Citizens’ Initiative's modus operandi. Otherwise, it will merely represent filler pages in the treaty.    EGMONT Royal Institute for International Relations  4  Timmermans also promised greater transparency on trilateral negotiations. The astuteness test that Timmermans has to pass when it comes to trilogues marks the fine line between transparency and efficiency. A true transparency leverage, which could render the EU more legitimate, lies within these trilogue negotiations. Citizens need to be aware of the positions of their political representatives. However, it seems that the usual transparency watchdogs are not alone in this race, as the constant vigilance of the European Ombudsman is transformed into the long-awaited transparency expectations. On 28 May, her office launched an official investigation into the notoriously arcane trilogues, expecting rapid results.  Admittedly, we should not underplay the level of transparency that the EU institutions already offer compared to other organisations and national entities. It is in fact one of the most transparent structures in the world. Impact assessments and the subsidiarity principle The subsidiarity principle dominates EU law-making. EU legislation could be deemed unnecessary at the most local level, or on the contrary, could be essential to reach proposed objectives. This gives the subsidiarity principle a dual nature, forcing  us to highlight the importance of caution in the EU legislation simplification process. The Better Regulation scanner should not undermine the Internal Market nor its four freedoms, while the impact assessments and the subsidiarity principle tests should always bear in mind the cost of non-Europe as a consequence of non-existent EU legislative initiatives. Finally, one should remember that in the end, the EU level could indeed be the better level at which to act. The proliferation of impact assessments cannot be overlooked in the Interinstitutional Agreement proposal. It indicates that impact assessments could be required in the case of ‘substantial amendments’ tabled by the European Parliament or by the Council. The concept of ‘substantial’ deserves a clear definition by the Commission in order to avoid discussions, interpretations and its misapplication in practice. Together with the eight-week consultations with the stakeholders after the Commission adopted its proposal, it is likely that these additional impact assessments would burden the political process of law-making and eventually slow it down. Normally designed as tools of support for the legislative process, they should not overload or even substitute for the political character of the EU legislative mechanism. Moreover, impact assessments could be stripped of their necessity. The use of impact assessments by the Council could be used by some Member States as a tool for blocking or 'indefinitely' postponing a proposal. Gauging the conveyer of EU legislative acts We could say that some of the concerns expressed by some Eurosceptic parties have been addressed through the Better Regulation Package. However, this push for better regulation also involves the review of all existing and pending legislation. Admittedly, in December 2014, the Commission mentioned that 80 pending bills would be dropped. This is rather worrying for the EU’s legitimacy as well as for the Commission’s authority and competence.  On April 14, although the European Court of Justice confirmed the inseparability of the Commission’s rights of initiative and of withdrawal, it also outlined concrete conditions for the Commission to jettison pending bills from the legislative table. Better Regulation does not necessarily mean less regulation, but rather more efficient regulation. The Interinstitutional Agreement that we will further address also includes a legislation withdrawal provision. It    EGMONT Royal Institute for International Relations  5  commits the three institutions to agree every year on the working programme, which should also include the legislative proposals that the Commission would withdraw. We can then safely assert that the spirit of conciliation is paramount to the EU functioning, and prevails over any form of unilateral institutional ambitions. The push to cut red tape is not entirely dependent on the withdrawal of proposals. Indeed, it could be dangerous to press the delete key for many legislative proposals submitted by the former Commission solely to please certain leaders. The fact that the Commission treats the UK referendum with importance and has created a special task force is already a good step. However, fear of the Brexit cannot limit the EU executive's right of initiative. One should remember that President Juncker explained that 'his' Commission will not be political, but ‘very political’. In the same vein, he wanted the Commission to harness its initiative correctly and not behave as a General Secretariat of the European Council. Under these circumstances, the best way to concretise these words is to put legislative proposals on the table, and not to act at the behest of any Member State or electoral momentum. Conclusion: Better Regulation must go hand in hand with more Politics Once governments and EU institutions realise that openness, inclusion and participatory democracy creates the best outcome in a political process, the populist fandoms will run short of arguments and stories to stir up disillusionment and increase euroscepticism. Perceptions of a streamlined EU would water down eurosceptic rebukes and bring solutions for better EU governance.  It is natural to have continual improvements to the transparency, accountability and efficiency mechanisms. Nevertheless, the future of Europe has always been a political project and, like all political projects, it should be supported by public opinion. Consequently, it is imperative for the EU to become a proper political arena with strong political actors in order to have a genuine democratic process at the EU level. In this sense, we can only be sceptical vis-à-vis the aim of the Better Regulation Agenda. It appears to be a tool to rebuild trust in the eyes of EU citizens, but in many aspects it seems to limit the inherently political dimension of the EU decision-making process. Yet, the Luxembourg commitment to frame its priorities around the interests of the citizen should be a recurrent responsibility for the future rotating presidencies. The EU needs its citizens’ support and trust – above all in time of crises that create divisions and scepticism. Fabian Willermain is Research Fellow at Egmont – Royal Institute for International Relations. Anca Cioriciu is Project Assistant - Soros Foundation Moldova, part of Open Society Foundations. 

The Better Regulation Package: Creating better regulations, but for what kind of EU politics?. European Policy Brief No. 39, October 2015

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