Source: European Parliament
The 2025 Annual Single Market and Competitiveness Report[1] warns that Europe risks falling behind in the area of innovation. In response, the Commission’s Competitiveness Compass[2] includes targeted actions, such as a new EU Start-up and Scale-up Strategy and a 28th regime to address the obstacles preventing new companies from emerging and scaling up .
The Single Market Strategy[3] presents an action plan to improve the functioning of the Single Market and promote cross-border provision of services and cross-border movement of goods and to support competitiveness and innovation more broadly.
The Commission is simplifying EU rules and their implementation to reduce complexity and compliance costs for businesses, including sustainability reporting[4].
Further measures are planned in the Commission’s 2025 work programme[5]. In addition, the Commission’s goal is to make Europe the ‘Artificial Intelligence (AI) Continent’.
The AI Act[6] ensures market access, legal clarity and stronger consumer trust, while safeguarding EU citizens’ safety and fundamental rights. The AI Continent Action Plan[7], launched on 9 April 2025, will boost the EU’s AI innovation capabilities.
Evaluations and fitness checks will allow evaluating the potential to simplify, consolidate and codify the EU acquis and find opportunities to cut costs.
As part of its simplification agenda, the Commission will conduct an ambitious and comprehensive screening of existing EU legislation to stress-test the EU acquis and identify overlaps, contradictions, and obsolete provisions.
The Commission will also apply the new small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) and competitiveness checks with a strong sector focus, and analysis on SMEs impacts.
- [1] The 2025 Annual Single Market and Competitiveness Report, COM(2025) 26 final.
- [2] A Competitiveness Compass for the EU, COM(2025) 30 final.
- [3] The Single Market: our European home market in an uncertain world. A Strategy for making the Single Market simple, seamless and strong, COM(2025) 500 final.
- [4] Sustainability Omnibus: https://finance.ec.europa.eu/publications/commission-simplifies-rules-sustainability-and-eu-investments-delivering-over-eu6-billion_en.
- [5] 2025 Commission work programme: https://commission.europa.eu/strategy-and-policy/strategy-documents/commission-work-programme_en.
- [6] Artificial Intelligence Act, Regulation (EU) 2024/1689.
- [7] AI Continent Action Plan, COM(2025) 165 final.